V 

1 



- 




THE 

CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
OF THE SOUL. 

AN ESSAY. 

BY 

H. C. ESTES, D.D. 

It is of the most vital importance to know whether the soul i3 mortal 
or immortal. — Pascal. 



BOSTON:. 
NOTES, HOLMES AND COMPANY, 

219 Washington Street. 
1873. 




Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by 

Notes, Holmes and Company, 
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



The Library 
of Congress 

washington 



RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE: 
STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY 
H. 0. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY. 



I 



To 



PROF. CHARLES E. HAMLIN, 

A CLASSMATE IX COLLEGE, 
A LIFELONG FRIEND, 
A PROFOUND STUDENT, AND AN ABLE EXPOUNDER 
OF 

THE THOUGHTS OF GOD IN NATURE 
AS IN HARMONY "WITH HIS THOUGHTS IN REVELATION, 

2TJ)ts Uolume 

IS FRATERNALLY INSCRIBED, BY 

H. C. E. 



CONTENTS. 



— ♦ — 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Preliminary Observations .... 5 

II. The Faith of Christendom ... 17 

EI. The Teaching of Nature and Reason . . 31 

IV. The Teaching of the Bible ... 71 

V. Conclusion . . . . .' . . .153 



PREFATOKY NOTE. 



The following essay, which has been the growth 
of years, is now published, because many persons, 
whose judgment is to be respected, have, from time 
to time, requested its publication, and because the 
author hopes that its publication will do something 
to confirm the faith of men in the important doc- 
trine of the spirituality and immortality of the soul. 

The volume is entitled " The Christian Doctrine 
of the Soul" because the author thought it advis- 
able to consider the subject in the light of Chris- 
tian Theology, and of Nature and Reason, as well 
as in the light of the Bible, so that the discussion 
might be, not narrow or one-sided, but broad and 
many-sided, if not complete and exhaustive. 

With a prayer for the blessing of Him who is 
" a Spirit," and " the Father of spirits," the work 
is commended to all who love the truth, or who 
seek it and would hold it fast. 

H. C. E. 

Paris, March 1, 1873. 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF 
THE SOUL. 



CHAPTER L 

PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS. 

According to common belief, to reason, and to 
holy Scripture, man has a twofold or double being, 
and lives, a twofold or double life. The one is the 
life of the body ; the other is the life of the soul. 
By the body we are linked to the earth beneath, 
blended with nature in its ceaseless flow, and made 
kindred to the brutes that with us walk the earth, 
and to the worms that crawl, waiting for us, in the 
ground ; by the soul we are raised above the earth 
and above the sphere and course of nature, made 
partakers of what is properly called the super- 
natural, linked to the heavens above, and made 
children of God and kindred to his angels, who can 
never die. In and through the body with its vari- 
ous senses, we live from day to day a low, gross, 
material, earthly life ; in and through the soul with 



6 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

its lofty aesthetic, intellectual, moral, and religious 
faculties, we live, less or more, a higher and purer, 
a spiritual and heavenly life. By the body we do 
works and enjoy pleasures kindred to those of 
brutes ; by the soul we do works and enjoy pleas- 
ures kindred to those of angels. In virtue of this 
twofoldness of our human constitution, our lan- 
guage, that wonderful expression, that image and 
mirror of our being, has a twofold or double charac- 
ter corresponding to the physical and the spiritual 
elements of our constitution. A great number and 
variety of words are used first in a lower, material 
sense, and then in a higher, moral or spiritual sense. 
The word heart, for instance, is used first to denote 
that inward, central, physical organ by which the 
life-blood is kept coursing in an endless circuit 
throughout the body ; and then it is used to denote 
that moral seat or centre of feeling, affection, un- 
derstanding, and determination, by which a man 
" deviseth his way," while " the Lord directeth his 
steps." The word heaven is used to denote first the 
overarching firmament, the sky, and then the re- 
gions of the blest and the dwelling-place of God. 
The word spirit means first the breath or air in 
motion, and then the mind of man and the eternal 
Mind, as in Christ's saying, " God is a spirit." The 
word life, also, denotes first physical, and then moral 
life ; the life of the body lived here in this world, 



Preliminary Observations. 7 

and the higher life of the soul continued forever in 
the blessedness of the world to come; as when 
Christ said, u He that loveth his life shall lose it, 
and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep 
it unto life eternal." Thus compounded of what 
we call the body and the soul, we live the double 
life of the body and of the soul. 

But what is the soul ? some may be disposed to 
ask. What does the word properly signify ? Or 
what should we mean by it when we use it ? These 
questions should not be regarded as altogether idle, 
for, like the simple rules and operations of Arith- 
metic, they are fundamental ; nor should they be 
regarded as too simple to be asked, for by some 
they have been considered as too difficult to be 
answered. In reply to this question, " What is the 
soul ? " a French writer of the last century is re- 
ported to have said, " I know nothing about it, ex- 
cept that it is spiritual and immortal." " Then," 
said the one who had asked the question, " let us 
ask Fontenelle." But the other replied, " No, ask 
any one rather than him, for he knows too much 
to think that he knows more than we do about 
it." 

But so far as the question, What is the soul? 
relates to the meaning of the word, it is easily 
answered. The word usually denotes the intelli- 
gent, spiritual, and immortal principle in man; 



8 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

that which thinks, is conscious and self-conscious ; 
that which reaches forth after, and revels in, the 
True, the Beautiful, and the Good. It is simply 
another word for the human mind or spirit. So the 
common people and the philosophers alike under- 
stand it. The masses of those who are uneducated 
and unused to precision of thought and language, 
and most accurate thinkers like Reid, Stewart, and 
Hamilton, use the words interchangeably, and as of 
substantially the same meaning. From custom or 
for the sake of euphony, one word is used in one 
connection and another in another, as when we 
speak of the immortality of the soul, the powers 
of the mind, and the spirit which God has formed 
in man, and which we speak of as embodied or 
disembodied ; but the substance of meaning in the 
words mind, soul, and spirit is precisely the same. 

In the Bible, however, as in the language of 
common literature and common life, these words are 
used with much latitude and diversity of meaning. 
Sometimes they are used to denote particularly that 
part of man which is " spiritual and immortal ; " 
sometimes in other senses. And this diversified 
usage of the words in the Bible is what might be 
expected from the fact that it is not a treatise on one 
of the exact sciences, or a strictly philosophical 
work, but was written for the people, and therefore 
in language not precise and scientific, but loose and 



Preliminary Observations. 9 



popular^ like that of Bunyan or Shakespeare. Some 
of our English dictionaries give as many as fourteen 
different significations of the word life ; thirteen of 
the word body ; 1 and nine of the word soul. No 

1 In its bearings on this subject, the diversified usage of 
the word body is quite interesting and instructive. It is 
used to denote, — 

1 . The material part of an animal, as in the saying, " The 
body without the spirit is dead." 

2. The organized mass of a plant, as in the saying, " God 
giveth it a body as it hath pleased Him, and to every seed 
its own body." 

3. The form in which the spirit is manifested, whether it 
be an earthly or heavenly form, as in the saying, " There is 
a natural body, and there is a spiritual body." 

4. The main part of an animal, or the trunk as distin- 
guished from the head and limbs, as when one says, "The 
ephod was a covering for the body/' 

5. Any material substance whether solid, liquid, or gas- 
eous, on earth or in the heavens, as when we call the rocks, 
waters, and gases, " bodies," or speak of " the heavenly 
bodies." 

6. A person, as in the expression " somebody," or when 
one is called " an eminent body." 

7. Reality as opposed to symbol or shadow, as when the 
observances of Judaism are called " a shadow of things to 
come, while the body is of Christ." 

8. A collective mass, as when we speak of " the great 
body of mankind." 

9. The principal part of anything, as "the main body of 
an army." 

10. A summary of any kind of knowledge, as in the 
expression, " a body of divinity." 

Of course it would be very idle for one to say that because 
this word is used in any two or three of these senses, there- 
fore it must not be understood in any other ! 



10 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 



one, therefore, need be perplexed by the different 
senses in which these words are used in the 
Bible. 

The nature or essence of the soul is a great mys- 
tery. No man can reveal it. No man should pre- 
tend to reveal it. There is something within us that 
thinks, reasons, remembers, loves, hates, chooses, de- 
termines, approves or disapproves, commends or con- 
demns, and is conscious of doing these things ; but 
what it is to be such a self-conscious, thinking, rea- 
soning, willing, loving and hating, approving and con- 
demning power, we cannot tell. These operations of 
the soul are manifest, but the power which performs 
them is, like God himself, hidden from our sight. 
No human power of analysis or comprehension can 
grasp or fathom it. But, as from his works we 
know that there is a God, although we see Him not ; 
and as from his works we know that He is a be- 
ing of intelligence, power, goodness, justice, and 
holiness, though we cannot tell what, in his eter- 
nal and incomprehensible essence or nature, He 
is, his existence and ever blessed attributes being 
shown so clearly by the things that are made, that 
all who are ignorant of Him are without excuse : 
so, from the operations of the mind, — thought, rea- 
son, taste, imagination, memory, forecast, affection, 
the determinations of the will, the workings of con- 
science, and self-consciousness, — we know that we 



Preliminary Observations. 11 

have a mind or soul, that it is something distinct 
from the material framework of the body, that it 
is not a material but a spiritual substance, and fitted 
to be, as Christ in his gospel has assured us that 
it is, immortal. 

No one, however, need be perplexed by this fact 
of the great mystery of the soul's nature or es- 
sence. For it is only one of many mysteries 
around us and within us. The body and life itself 
are kindred and equal mysteries. 

The body, we say, is material, or composed of 
matter. But what is matter ? some may ask. 
What is the real nature or essence of it ? This is 
a question that has often been asked. But no man 
can answer it. Indeed, whether matter has any 
real, or only an ideal existence ; that is, whether it 
has any proper, substantial bein^r, or is only an ap- 
pearance, is a point concerning which profoundest 
thinkers have disagreed for ages. Many different 
theories have been put forth in exposition of the 
subject, but still it must be confessed that the real 
nature or essence of what we call matter is the 
great unsolved, if not unsolvable, enigma of the 
scientific world. 

Life also is a great mystery. No man can re- 
veal it. No man can tell what life is in ourselves, 
in the beasts of the field, or in the tiny plants that 
we trample under foot. In the long-continued, 



12 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

persistent, and earnest effort to discover and explain 
it. all the resources of science and philosophy have 
been enlisted and exhausted, but the effort has been 
utterly and signally in vain. The best definitions 
yet given of it confess its mystery. One defines it 
as " the condition by which a body resists a natural 
tendency to chemical changes." Another (Hum- 
boldt) speaks of it as " a certain inward power/' 
which hinders living bodies from undergoing 
those changes of form which various causes are 
ever tending to produce. Another says, u It is 
something — we know not what — which keeps 
the machine [of the organized body] in action, and 
at the same time preserves it from decay." So 
utterly inscrutable is life. And, if the very dust 
of which our bodies are composed, and the life by 
which they are animated, are thus utter mysteries, 
surely no one need be perplexed or staggered by 
the mystery of the nature of the soul ; nor should 
we be asked to explain it, until those who ask it 
can tell what the body is, or what its life is. 

TVithout presuming, however, to inquire at all 
into the hidden, mysterious nature of the thinking 
power in man, we may properly inquire whether it 
is material or immaterial, what is its relation to the 
body, and what becomes of it at death. This is 
the inquiry which it is now proposed to make in 
this essay on the Christian doctrine of the soul, 
particularly its spirituality and immortality. 



Preliminary Observations. 13 

Concerning the nature and destination of the 
soul, there have been for ages two different and 
contradictory opinions. They were held, and they 
were in conflict in ancient times ; they are held, 
and they are in conflict now. 1 

According to one of these opinions, the soul is 
material, perishable, mortal. It has, and can have, 
no existence apart from the body. It is a part or 
accident of the body ; and therefore it ceases to 
exist when the body dies. Like a shadow it van- 
ishes, and is no more, when the body to which it 
belongs is dissolved in death. Like the breath it 
is exhaled and dissipated. Some say that it is the 
breath ; some, that it is the life; some, that it is a 
result of physical organization, or a collective name 
for the various functions of the nervous system, 
particularly of the brain, which thinks just as other 
organs carry on their appropriate works of diges- 
tion or secretion. Some of the earlier material- 
ists held that the brain secretes thought, precisely 
as the liver secretes the bile ; some of the later 
materialists prefer to represent thought as the ac- 
tion of the brain, carefully distinguishing between 

1 The history of this conflict is both interesting and in- 
structive. In Mr. Ezra Abbot's admirable Bibliography of 
this subject, which has justly been said to be "in itself almost 
a history, .... at least an historical chart," there are more 
than five thousand titles of " works relating to the nature, 
origin, and destiny of the soul." 



14 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

the action of the machine and the force, — nervous 
electricity, — that moves it. But whatever differ- 
ences there may be in the views and theories of 
those who hold this opinion, they are all agreed in 
this, that man is wholly material, that he has no 
mind, or soul, or spirit, to survive the dissolution 
of the body, that when he dies he dies entirely, and 
that the dead, having returned to dust, have no 
conscious being, but are in a state of absolute un- 
consciousness and non-existence, until the resurrec- 
tion of the last day, as the annihilationists or soul- 
sleepers say, or forever, as the atheists say. This 
is one opinion of the soul. 

According to the other view, however, man has 
a soul, mind, or spirit, which though for .the present 
connected with the body, and to a certain extent 
dependent on it, is yet really distinct from it, inde- 
pendent of it, superior to it, and capable of a dis- 
tinct, separate, independent, and endless existence ; 
yea, is destined to such an existence after the disso- 
lution of the body. This is the other opinion of 
the soul. 

From the times of Socrates and Plato, — nay, 
from earlier times, ■ — to our own, the controversy 
between these views of the soul and the body, mat- 
ter and spirit, has been carried on, sometimes with 
more, sometimes with less of interest and activity, 
but perhaps never with more than since the close 



Preliminary Observations. 15 

of the last century. The French infidelity, whose 
sweep was like that of the annihilating revolution ; 
the German atheism, which has more recently sup- 
planted the pantheism of the day of Hegel; the 
gross materialism, which has infected much of mod- 
ern scientific teaching in Germany, France, and 
England ; and the wide-spread and sweeping delu- 
sion of the Millerites in this country, a little more 
than a quarter of a century ago, with the material- 
istic, destructions t, and soul-sleeping views and 
sects that sprang up, a rank and poisonous growth, 
from the ruin and rubbish left by that storm of re- 
ligious error, excitement, and fanaticism which 
swept away the foundations of Christian faith from 
how many souls ! — these things have given a spe- 
cial prominence and importance to this question, in 
this century. 

Which, then, of these two opinions or theories 
of the soul, is correct? Which is in harmony with 
the common faith of Christendom, the common 
faith of mankind, and the teachings of the Bible ? 
Which has been held and taught by the main 
branches of the Christian Church, from the begin- 
ning till now ? Which is taught with more or less 
plainness and positiveness by nature and reason ? 
And which is taught with authority by the Bible ? 
These three inquiries point out the threefold line 
of thought and argument which, in the following 



16 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

chapters, it is our purpose to follow far enough to 
see what light is thrown upon our subject by the 
commonly received faith of the Christian Church, 
by natural religion, and by the Bible. 



CHAPTER II. 



THE FAITH OF CHRISTENDOM. 

The belief that man has a soul as well as a 
body, and that the soul is spiritual and immortal, 
has been the commonly received, orthodox doctrine 
of the Christian Church from the beginning ; while 
the other notion, that man has no soul, or that it is 
material, mortal, and j^erishable, that the whole man 
dies at death, or that the soul sleeps in unconscious- 
ness and nothingness from the moment of death 
till the resurrection of the last day, is heretical, or 
contrary to the received faith of the Christian 
Church in all its branches throughout all ages. 

The commonly received doctrine of the early 
Church, from the Apostolic Fathers downwards, 
was that the soul passes at death into another state 
of being, and continues its existence, without inter- 
ruption or suspension, either in Hades or in heaven. 
There were many different opinions and theories as 
to the origin, nature, relations, and operations of 
the soul, but there was no doubt or question that it 
was something distinct from the body, and capable 
of a distinct, separate, and independent existence 
2 



18 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

after death. There was much diversity, uncer- 
tainty, and fluctuation of opinion as to the actual 
condition of the departed in the future state, espe- 
cially during the period between death and the res- 
urrection, but there was no doubt at all as to the 
fact of the soul's continued existence and conscious- 
ness in the disembodied state. The well-known 
and wide-spread opinion of the ancient Church, 
that, after his crucifixion, Christ descended into 
hell and there preached the gospel to the spirits of 
men who had lived in the ages before his advent, 
takes this doctrine for granted, and without an an- 
tecedent faith in the continued existence both of 
Christ and of the souls of men, this opinion would 
have been manifestly impossible. The same faith 
was involved and expressed in the commemoration 
of the martyrs, in the festivals celebrated at their 
burial-places, whether in caves or catacombs, on 
the anniversaries of their martyrdom, which were 
called " dies natales," for the reason that the day 
of a martyr's death was regarded as the day of his 
birth to a higher and nobler life. And many of 
those early Christian writers who are justly called 
" the Fathers of the Church," and who " belong to 
Christendom without distinction of denominations," 
have left on record in their writings their views 
upon this subject, and their firm faith in the unin- 
terrupted existence of the soul after death. 



The Faith of Christendom. 19 

Clement of Rome, who is thought by many to 
have been the one spoken of by St. Paul as having 
his name in " the Book of Life," says that " Peter, 
. . . . having suffered martyrdom, went into the 
place of glory due him," and in view of Paul's 
martyrdom he says, " Thus he was removed from 
the world, and went into the holy place." 1 

Polycarp, who had been a disciple of St. John, 
after mentioning Ignatius and Zosimus and Rufus, 
and Paul himself, and the rest of the Apostles, 
says, " They are in their appointed place in the 
presence of the Lord ; " 2 and in his prayer at the 
stake, when he suffered martyrdom, he declared his 
confidence that "he should be received that day 
among the martyrs in the presence of God." 3 

The unknown author of the " Epistle to Diogne- 
tus," which has been called one of the most beauti- 
ful of all the remains of Christian antiquity, makes 
a distinction between the soul and the body, and 
indicates his own opinion that the soul is immortal, 
in language which for clearness, force and beauty, 
could hardly be surpassed. He says, " The soul 
dwells in the body, yet is not of the body ; . . . . 
the invisible soul is guarded by the visible body ; 
.... the soul is imprisoned in the body, yet pre- 

1 Ep. of Clement to the Cor., chap. v. 

2 Polycarp, Ep. to the Phil., chap. ix. 

3 Martyrdom of Polycarp, chap. xiv. 



20 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 



serves that very body ; . . , . the immortal sou] 
[ajQdvaros fj i^x"'/] dwells in a mortal tabernacle, 
and Christians dwell as sojourners in corruptible 
bodies, looking for an incorruptible dwelling in the 
heavens." 

Justin Martyr, in an elaborate writing addressed 
to the Roman Emperor and his sons, to defend the 
Christians from the cruelties of persecution, sol- 
emnly reminds them of that death which is common 
to all men, and of that conscious state of existence, 
and those retributions, which, as the heathen super- 
stitions, divinations, oracles, philosophers, and poets 
teach, follow death ; and he says to them, u If 
death issued in insensibility it would be a godsend 
to all the wicked, but since sensation remains to 
all who have ever lived, and eternal punishment is 
laid up, see that ye neglect not to be convinced, 
and to hold as your belief that these things are 
true ; " 1 and in his Hortatory Address to the 
Greeks, 2 he speaks of the immortality of the soul 
as one of the things concerning which the inspired 
Christian teachers have given instruction, saying. 
" As if with one mouth and one tongue, they have 
in succession, and in harmony with one another, 
taught us both concerning God and the creation ol 
the world and the formation of man, and concern- 
ing the immortality of the human soul [~epi 5* 

1 First Apology, chap, xviii. 2 Chap. viii. 



The Faith of Christendom, 21 



Opai-ivrjs i/^'X^s aBoyourias] and the judgment which 
is to be after this life, and concerning all things 
which it is needful for us to know, and thus in 
divers times and £)laces have afforded us the divine 
instruction/' 

Athenagoras also says, " Men, in respect of the 
soul, have from their birth an unchangeable continu- 
ance, but in respect of the body obtain immortality 
by means of change ; " 1 and in another work he 
says, ' ; TTe are persuaded that when we are re- 
moved from the present life we shall live another 
life, better than the present one, and heavenly, not 
earthly (since we shall abide near God, and with 
God, free from all change or suffering in the soul, 
not as flesh, even though we shall have flesh, but 
as heavenly spirit), or, falling with the rest, a 
worse one and in fire ; for God has not made us as 
sheep or beasts of burden, a mere by-work, and 
that we should perish and be annihilated." 2 

Clement of Alexandria, in a fragment that has 
been preserved from a lost book on the soul, says, 
" The souls of all, as they are breathed forth, have 
the faculty of life, and though separated from the 
body, they are found to possess a love for it ; " and 
his faith in the separate existence of souls after 
death is involved in his doctrine that the gospel 

1 Resurrection of the Dead, chap. xvi. 

2 Plea for the Christians, chap. xxxi. 



22 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

was preached by Christ and his Apostles to those 
who were imprisoned in Hades, and that souls in 
the separate state may pass through a kind of puri- 
fying or purgatorial fire. 1 

The views of Origen concerning the nature of 
the soul were such that he looked upon immortal- 
ity as essential to it ; 2 and when the sect of the 
Thnetopsychites (as John of Damascus called 
them), or the Arabici, arose in Arabia about A. d. 
248, and taught that the human soul dies and is 
totally destroyed with the body, and is revived with 
it at the time of the resurrection, he was called 
from Egypt to oppose the heresy, and through his 
influence those false teachers were led to confess 
and renounce their error. It has been said that, 
of all who have borne the Christian name, they 
were first to teach this error. 3 

Tertullian spoke of death as " the disjunction of 
body and soul ; " he held that only the martyrs 
have the privilege of entering immediately into 
heaven, while other saints are detained in a sepa- 
rate state till the time of the resurrection ; and he 
utterly repudiated the notion that the soul sleeps 
or is in a state of unconsciousness in the intermedi- 
ate state. 4 

1 The Biblical Repository, 1834, pp. 643-653. 

2 Hagenbach, History of Christian Doctrines, vol. i. p. 221. 

3 Mosheim, Neander, and Hagenbach, in he. 

4 Shedd's History of Christian Doctrine, vol. ii. p. 401. R. 
W. Landis, Immortality of the Soul, p. 299. 



The Faith of Christendom. 23 

Cyprian said to his church at Carthage, when 
that city was swept by a fearful pestilence, " We 
ought not to mourn for our brethren, who, by the 
call of the Lord, have been delivered from the 
world, since we know that they are not lost, but 
sent before us ; that they have taken leave of us 
to precede us. We ought to long for them as we 
do for those who are absent on a journey, or who 
have sailed on a distant voyage ; but we should 
not lament them ; nor should we put on black 
robes of mourning for them here, when they have 
put on white robes of glory there. We should not 
give the heathen occasion justly to accuse us of 
mourning for them as extinct and lost, concerning 
whom we say, They do live with God ; and of 
not confirming by the witness of our hearts that 
faith which we profess with our lips. . . . Why 
do we, who live in hope, who believe in God, who 
trust that Christ has suffered and been raised for 
us, abiding in Christ and rising through Him and 
in Him, why are we ourselves unwilling to depart 
from this world? Or why do we lament and 
mourn for those who have taken leave of us, as if 
they were lost, when Christ, our Lord and God 
exhorts and says, 6 1 am the resurrection and 
the life ; he that believeth in me, though he die, 
shall live, and whosoever liveth and believeth in 
me shall never die ' ? . . . . By death we pass over 



2-1 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

to immortality. Why do we not make haste and 
run to see our native land, and to salute our par- 
ents ? There awaits us a great multitude of those 
who love us, a vast and eager crowd of parents, 
brothers, children, who long for us, assured now of 
their own salvation, and anxious only for ours." 1 

Gregory Nazianzen said, " When the souls of 
the righteous are freed from their bodies, they joy- 
fully hasten to the Lord, and enjoy inconceivable 
pleasure in his presence." 2 

Augustine said, "The souls of the righteous, 
being separated from the body, are at rest : but the 
souls of the wicked suffer punishment until the 
time when the bodies of these shall be awakened to 
eternal life, and of those to eternal death, that death 
which is called the second death ; " 3 and, " What 
simple or illiterate man or obscure woman is there 
now, who does not believe in the immortality of 
the soul, and a future state ? " 4 

Gregory of Nyssa, also, and Hilary, Lactantius, 
Ambrose, Jerome, and others, of well-known names, 
who were representative men, held and expressed 
^the same view that the soul continues its conscious 
existence after the death of the body, so that the 

1 Library of Latin Fathers, vol. iii. Cypriani Opera, De 
Mortalitate, xx. 

2 Landis' Immortality of the Soul, pp. 301, 302. 

3 De Civitate Dei. Lib. xiii. cap. yiii. 

4 Epist. cxxxvii. Ad Volusianum. 



The Faith of Christendom. 



25 



learned Limborch says that " This was the common 
opinion of the Fathers : " and in one of the Lit- 
urgies of the ancient Church, that of St. Clement, 
in the Apostolical Constitutions, this doctrine is 
expressed in the words, " Thou madest him [man] 
of an immortal soul and a perishable body " 
\_7re-o[r]KO.$ avrov €K i/ruffls aOavdrov kol croj/xaros 
otccoWtov], 1 which may be regarded as a brief but 
comprehensive statement of this doctrine of the 
early Church. 

Passing now from the early Church to the times 
since the seamless garment was rent in twain, 

1 The Liturgies of S. Mark, S. James, S. Clement, S. 
Chrysostom, S. Basil: edited by Rev. J. M. Xeale : p. 99. 

The passage from which the words above quoted are taken 
is the following : " And Thou hast not only created the 
world, but man likewise the citizen of it, manifesting in him 
the beauty and excellency of that beautiful and excellent crea- 
tion. Tor Thou saidst to Thine own wisdom, Let us make 
man in our own image and after our own likeness, and let 
them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the 
fowl of the air. Wherefore Thou madest him of an immortal 
soul and a perishable body, the soul out of nothing and the 
body of the four elements ; this endued with five senses, and a 
power of motion ; that with reason and a faculty of distin- 
guishing between religion and irreligion, the just and the 
unjust." 

It is needless to discuss the question as to the age of the 
Apostolic Constitutions : a question on which much learning 
has been expended, and which can never be answered with 
certainty. It is enough for us, with the generality of learned 
men, to assign them to the third century ; but the Liturgies 
which they contain are doubtless of a much earlier date. 



26 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 



we find the same doctrine held fast and taught by 
all the leading branches of the Church of every 
name. 

In the Liturgies of the Greek Church, it is pro- 
vided that special prayers shall be offered for the 
souls of the dead during the next forty days after 
their separation from the body ; and also certain 
days are appointed by that Church for the offering 
of prayers for all the dead ; and these services, 
with the invocation of departed saints, which is 
allowed by that Church, show that whatever else 
she may or may not believe, she certainly believes 
in the continued existence of the soul after death. 

The faith of the Roman Catholic Church on this 
point, as stated by her own writers, is that a The 
state of the good and of the wicked commences 
immediately after death ; " and her doctrine of 
Purgatory has been borrowed from what Calvin 
calls this " true principle, that death is not annihila- 
tion, but a transition from this life into another." 

In the Augsburg Confession, which was framed 
in 1530, which is " recognized by the Evangelical 
Lutheran Church throughout the world," and which 
has been called " the mother-symbol of Protes- 
tantism," because it " has had more to do with shap- 
ing the Confessions of Protestant Christendom, than 
any other Confession of ancient or modern times," 
there is no special declaration concerning the con- 



The Faith of Christendom. 27 

dition of the soul immediately after death, because 
this was not one of the questions then in agitation 
or controversy between the Romish Church and 
the Protestants, but the seventeenth Article " con- 
demns the Anabaptists who think that to the 
damned and to devils there will be an end of punish- 
ment;" and under this Confession the Lutheran 
Church, in common with other orthodox Christians, 
believes in a future state of reward and punish- 
ments, the immortality of the soul, and the resurrec- 
tion of the body. 1 

The doctrine of the Protestant Episcopal Church 
is taught plainly enough in her Burial Service, in 
which it is said that " The spirits of those who de- 
part this life in the Lord do live with God," and 
that " The souls of the faithful after they are deliv- 
ered from the burden of the flesh are in joy and 
felicity." 

In the Heidelberg Catechism, which for three 
hundred years has been the received declaration of 
faith of the Reformed Churches of Europe and 
America, the express and positive statement on this 
point is, " My soul after this life shall be immedi- 
ately taken up to Christ its head." 

In the Westminster Assembly's Shorter Cate- 

1 Philippi Melancthonis Opera, vol. x. p. 362, and " The 
Evangelical Lutheran Church in the United States, by J. 
A. Brown, D. D.," in the Bibliotheca Sacra, July, 1868. 



28 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

chism, which is recognized by the Orthodox Con- 
gregationalists and the Presbyterians of this country 
and Great Britain, as an authoritative statement of 
their faith, the declaration is, u The souls of be- 
lievers are, at their death, made perfect in holiness, 
and do immediately pass into glory." 

In the Confession of Faith put forth by the Bap- 
tists of England and TTales in the year 1689, there 
is the following grandly ringing statement, in the 
very words of the Savoy Confession adopted by the 
Puritan Independents in 1658: "The bodies of 
men after death return to dust and see corruption, 
but their souls, which neither die nor sleep, having 
an immortal subsistence, immediately return to God, 
who gave them ; the souls of the righteous, being 
then made perfect in holiness, are received into 
Paradise, where they are with Christ, and behold 
the face of God in light and glory." 

In a statement of " the Faith of Evangelical 
Adventists," " the dissolution of the body and the 
separate existence of the soul " is mentioned as one 
of " those doctrines generally recognized as the 
fundamentals of Christianity." 

Those who hold the doctrine of eternal pun- 
ishment uniformly believe that, as John Bunyan 
says, " Man's state is such that he has a sensible 
being forever ; " and all forms of the doctrines of 
final restoration and universal salvation take this 



The Faith of Christendom. 29 



view of the soul for granted. Methodists and 
Free-will Baptists, Friends and Sweclenborgians, 1 
Unitarians and Universalists, are agreed with the 
Christian bodies that have been enumerated, in 
holding that the doctrine of the continued existence 
of the soul is an essential element of Christianity. 

Such as this is the faith of Christendom, or of 
the Christian Church in all its branches, Greek, 
Roman, and Protestant. It is a faith of which we 
may say, after the manner of Vincentius, that it has 
been held always, and everywhere, and by all, from 
ancient, through mediaeval, to modern times ; for its 
absolute unity has been broken only by such small 
numbers at different times, like the Thnetopsychites 
of Arabia, the Anabaptists of Germany, and the 
Annihilationists of our own country, as have no 
greater proportion to the whole body than the spots 
on the sun have to the extent of his shinino; face. 

1 The following statement of the " doctrine of the New 
[or Swedenborgian] Church " was made for this work, by 
the Rev. T. 0. Paine, Professor of Hebrew in the New 
Church Theological School, Waltham, Mass. 

" The soul or spirit is the man himself, in the human 
form, and is removed from the body as soon as the inmost 
fibres of the heart are still, which is within two or three days 
after the last breath. A man's life is not interrupted an in- 
stant from the beginning of his existence to eternity, but 
when he is taken alive into the spiritual world, the effect or 
result on his cast-off body, never to be resumed, is called 
death." 



30 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

It is plain therefore that if any persons, while 
professing the Christian faith, believe in any extinc- 
tion or sleep of the soul, or anything less than its 
continued, uninterrupted, conscious existence after 
death, their opinions should be considered as not in 
accordance with what the Church regards as sound 
doctrine, but as a disallowed, heretical opinion ; as 
not so much a belief as a disbelief, not so much a 
faith as a denial of faith. 



CHAPTER in. 



THE TEACHING OF NATURE AND REASON. 

Haying shown, in the preceding chapter, that 
the notion of the annihilation or sleep of the soul 
is heretical, that is, contrary to the commonly re- 
ceived orthodox doctrine of the Christian Church 
in all its branches throughout all ages, we pass 
now to show that it is also unreasonable, or incon- 
sistent with the teaching of nature and reason on 
this subject. 

The simple fact that the doctrine of annihilation 
or the sleep of the soul is heretical, does not by 
any means prove that it is false. So far from this, 
it is possible or supposable, that the commonly 
received doctrine of the Church on this or any 
other subject is erroneous. Therefore the question 
arises, Is the common and almost universally re- 
ceived doctrine of the Church on this subject of 
the soul erroneous ? and is the heresy of the anni- 
hilationists a doctrine that should be received as 
true ? as St. Paul said, " After the way which the 
Jews call heresy, so worship I the God of my 
fathers." 



32 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

In seeking, now, the answer given by nature 
and reason to this question, we will first examine 
the argument usually employed by the material- 
ists in support of their theory ; and then we will 
pass in review some of the prominent facts of na- 
ture and human nature, which go to prove that man 
has a soul, and that it is immortal. 

The argument of the materialist is in substance 
this : The power of thought in man is always 
found in connection with a certain material organ- 
ism ; the physical and mental powers usually grow 
and decay together ; the brain appears to be essen- 
tial to all the mental operations — sensation, reflec- 
tion, volition, reasoning, memory, imagination, con- 
sciousness ; the strength of the mental powers is 
usually in direct proportion to the development 
of the brain ; whenever the brain is in any way 
injured or destroyed, the power of thought is dis- 
ordered or destroyed ; and therefore the power 
of thought, that is, the mind or soul, should be 
regarded as dependent on the body, belonging to 
it, growing out of it, perishing with it. 

But strong as this argument may seem to some, 
its weakness can very easily be shown. For while 
it proves that in our present organism the brain 
is an invariable condition of thought, it does not 
prove that it is the cause of thought, or the think- 
ing power. It overlooks the plain and important 



The Teaching of Nature and Reason. 33 



distinction between a cause and a condition, even 
when it is an indispensable condition. It over- 
looks the distinction between an instrument and 
the power that uses it ; between machinery, and 
the force that moves it. And in consequence of 
overlooking this distinction, and reasoning as if 
there were no such distinction to be made, it fails 
entirely of proving the point in question. 

Many illustrations of this distinction, and of its 
bearing on the question before us, are at hand. 
For instance, the telegraphic wire, with other appa- 
ratus, is a well-known instrument for the transmis- 
sion of thought from one person to another. But 
it is not the thinking power. It is not the cause, 
but only a condition of thought, a medium for its 
transmission or communication. It is a piece of ma- 
chinery entirely distinct from the person or power 
that uses it. So also the optician's glass is often 
a condition, and an indispensable condition of see- 
ing ; but it is not itself the seeing power. Sup- 
pose that a person cannot see well enough to read 
without spectacles, while with them he can read 
easily. In this case what is it that sees and reads ? 
The spectacles ? Or the person who uses them as 
an instrument ? In like manner is it the telescope 
that sees the stars shining in those depths of space 
where no unassisted eye can reach ? Or is it the 
microscope that sees the remains of fossil infusoria, 
3 



34 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

by the thousand millions in a square inch of chalk, 
where the common observer with his unassisted 
vision could see no trace of such remains ? Or is 
it the ophthalmoscope that sees what till recently- 
had been hidden from the oculist, as well as from 
all others, in the secret chambers of the eye ? Of 
course the telescope or other glass is only an in- 
strument by means of which we see. The eye 
also is a condition, and an indispensable condition 
of vision, but it is not the eye itself that sees, any 
more than the telescope or the microscope. The 
eye is only the instrument or organ by means of 
which we see. And so in our present state, the 
brain may be a condition, and an indispensable 
condition of thought, and yet be only a condition, 
an instrument or organ of the thinking, perceiving 
power, which we call the mind or soul. 

Let all that the materialist's argument proves 
be granted. Grant that the brain is the organ, 
and preeminently the organ of thought, and that a 
certain physical organization is essential to our 
existence in the present world. What then ? 
Does it follow that it is the brain which thinks, 
that the thinking power is material, or that the 
thinking power will perish at death ? By no 
means. Not one single step has been taken to- 
wards proving this. For always when power is 
exerted through an intervening medium or instru- 



The Teaching of Nature and Reason. 35 



ment, its manifestations, other things being equal, 
are in exact proportion to the perfection of the 
instrument. The perfection of a mechanic's or 
artist's work depends entirely upon the perfection 
of the materials employed, and of the instruments 
with which he works. Without suitable materials 
and tools to work with, the conceptions of Michael 
Angelo and Raphael could find no fit expression in 
wood or stone, or on the canvas, and their high 
power of thought, taste, and genius would remain 
forever hidden from the knowledge of the world, 
though their marvelous conceptions might be pre- 
cisely the same as those which their works have 
bodied forth. The musician's skill is measured by 
the perfection of the instrument on which he plays, 
whether it be the violin, the harp, or the organ ; 
and if his instrument be broken or out of tune, he 
cannot play, though no one would, for this reason, 
suppose that his ability to discourse sweet music 
had been lost or destroyed. When the telegraphic 
wire is broken, or when any part of the delicate 
and complicated machinery of the office is out of 
order or destroyed, so that no message can be 
transmitted, when the Atlantic cable fails to work, 
no one regards the failure as any indication that 
the operator at the other end of the line has lost 
his power of thought, or ceased to exist. A per- 
son engaged in writing must have paper, pen, and 



36 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

ink, a hand and arm, and a nervous economy to 
transmit the condition of the paper to the brain, 
and to transmit the thoughts from the brain to the 
paper. If any one of these instruments or inter- 
vening media be wanting ; if the person has no 
hand or arm, no pen, ink, or paper, he cannot 
write, though no one would suppose, in such a 
case, that he had lost his ability to think. Why, 
then, should any one suppose that the power of 
thought is destroyed by pressure on the brain, or 
by the dissolution of the brain in death? There 
is no reason at all for the supposition. In spite 
of all that the materialist has said or shown, the 
power of thought may remain, though like the mu- 
sician's instrument, or the telegraphic wire, or the 
writer's arm, the appropriate medium for its mani- 
festation be disordered or destroyed. 

In one of his lectures before 'the Lowell Insti- 
tute on the subject of Natural Religion, Bishop 
Potter once spoke of a man who had lost all power 
of motion from the shoulders downwards, while he 
still retained his powers of thought and speech as 
perfectly as ever. What if that man's disease had 
advanced still farther upwards, till it had affected 
his speech, his eyes, his brain ? In this case would 
there have been any reason for thinking that his 
powers of thought, as well as those of expression, 
had been destroyed ? Not in the least. Such a 



The Teaching of Nature and Reason. 37 



supposition would be a pure assumption, unsup- 
ported by a single particle of proof. No physiolog- 
ical experiments or observations have shown the 
absolute dependence of the mental on the physical 
powers in man, or their identity, and we feel sure 
that it never can be shown. Prof. George I. Chace, 
of Brown University, in a profound article on 66 The 
Dependence of the Mental Powers upon the Bodily 
Organization," says, " There is no evidence of their 
[the mental phenomena] being dependent upon the 
organization, in any such manner as to render that 
necessary to their development ; " and, " There is 
nothing .... in the connection between the spirit 
and the body, so far as we are able to trace it, to 
afford ground for the belief, that the dissolution 
of the latter will be attended with the destruction 
of the former, or even with a diminution of its 
powers." 

Many instances have been known of persons 
lying, for a longer or shorter time, in a state of ap- 
parent insensibility and death, and then recovering 
from that state and declaring that they had been 
conscious all the time, and sensible of what was 
passing around them ; that they had been in full 
possession of their power to will, though deprived 
entirely of the power to perform what they willed ; 
that they had retained all their powers of mind, 
— reason, memory, forecast, imagination, affection, 



38 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

conscience, consciousness, will, — though the ability 
to manifest them through the body had been taken 
entirely away. And if the soul can thus retain its 
consciousness and other powers in such cases, why 
not in and after death ? 

Also, there have been cases in which, through 
the influence of some disease, the physical powers, 
both of sensation and of motion, have been com- 
pletely suspended, for a longer or shorter time, 
during which there has been not merely a continu- 
ance, but a great and marvelous increase of the 
mental powers. It was so in the case of William 
Tennant, a Presbyterian clergyman of the last cen- 
tury. While pursuing his theological studies his 
health became seriously impaired, and he was 
troubled with great and distressing doubts concern- 
ing his spiritual condition ; when, as he was con- 
versing with his brother one morning about the 
state of his soul, he suddenly seemed to expire. 
The usual preparations were made for the funeral, 
and the friends and neighbors were invited to at- 
tend it the next day. But in the evening, a young 
physician, his intimate friend, detected, as he 
thought, some signs of life ; and by urgent entreaty 
he caused the burial to be deferred till the third 
day, and then, when the friends and physician, who 
had not ceased to use all possible means of resusci- 
tation, were on the point of giving up the case in 



The Teaching of Nature and Reason, 39 

despair, suddenly the patient opened his eyes, 
groaned, and fainted. 

For a long time he seemed to hang midway be- 
tween life and death, but at last he fully recovered 
his health of body and his powers of mind ; and 
afterwards he gave to a friend, who published it, 
an account of what he had experienced in his won- 
drous trance. He said that while conversing with 
his brother, he suddenly found himself in another 
state of existence, and under the direction of some 
superior being, who conducted him through the 
aerial regions till he beheld an ineffable glory, and 
a great multitude, singing and rejoicing in a manner 
impossible to describe ; but when he expressed a 
wish to join the happy throng, he was told that he 
must return to earth. Grieving that it must be so, 
he awoke and saw his brother standing by him, 
reasoning with the physician about his condition, 
whether he were really dead or yet alive. It 
seemed to him but a few moments that he had been 
absent from the body, but in that little space of 
time, he had seen and heard, or thought, what left 
a deep and lasting impression on his mind. In his 
account of it he said, " The ravishing sounds of the 
songs and hallelujahs that I heard, and the very 
words that were uttered, were not out of my ears, 
when awake, for at least three years." We may not 
be able to give any satisfactory explanation of these 



40 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

facts, but of the facts themselves, the facts that he 
fell into such a trance, that after three days he re- 
covered from it, and that he gave this account of 
what had passed, or seemed to have passed, in his 
mind during that time, there can be no doubt. And 
if in such a case the soul can act with such amazing 
energy, while the body is utterly insensible and 
motionless, as if dead, why may it not survive and 
act, when the body is actually dead, dissolved in 
dust, and thrown off like an encumbering weight 
01* garment, which the runner in a race throws off 
lest it should hinder his swift progress towards the 
goal ? 

In sleep, also, that most curious and mysterious 
of all the phenomena of our earthly life, the soul's 
independence of the body is often marvelously 
shown. It is in what we call dreams. When deep 
sleep has fallen upon man ; when by its resistless 
power the body is laid prostrate on its bed of feath- 
ers or of stone ; and when the outward senses are 
all benumbed and closed as if in death : then the 
mind, which, like God, never slumbers nor sleeps, 
pursues its varied operations of thought — memory 
and forecast, reasoning and fancy, love and hate, 
hope and fear, joy and sorrow, self-approval and self- 
reproach ; and this in a manner which oftentimes 
far transcends all achievements while the person is 
awake. Sometimes it seems to go out from the body 



The Teaching of Nature and Reason. 41 



and range at will through all the universe of God. 
It takes up and completes the work which through 
the body's weariness or incapacity had been left un- 
done. It solves difficult problems in Arithmetic, 
Algebra, and Geometry, such as had defied the per- 
son's best endeavors while awake. It completes 
the composition, poem, painting, or statue upon 
which he had been at work. It" gazes upon scenes 
of beauty and of grandeur, such as were never seen 
by the eye of sense on sea or land. It listens to 
strains of music, softer, sweeter, richer, and more 
ravishing, than were ever heard by the outward ear, 
and whose vibrations in the soul continue long after 
the dream has passed away. It gives expression to 
its swelling thoughts in such words of eloquence and 
power as it was never given to the tongue to utter. 
It glows and burns with such love for dear ones 
and the absent, as was never felt in waking hours. 
It walks and talks with those long since departed, 
no less than with the living. It crosses rivers and 
oceans, visits all lands of the "East and West, the 
North and the South ; wanders in deepest forests, 
in trackless deserts, and among mountains lofty, 
dreary, and desolate, in comparison with which the 
Alps, the Andes, and the Himalayas are but as 
little hills. It leaves the earth ; rises above it ; 
soars aloft, as with an angel's wings ; treads the 
clouds and azure vault, the flaming north-light, and 

i 



42 The Christicwi Doctrine of the Soul. 

suns and stars, underneath its feet ; gazes una- 
bashed upon the great white throne, and looks down 
into the darkness and blackness of the pit that is 
bottomless ; writhes with the awful anguish and 
despair of the damned in hell, and thrills with the 
unutterable ecstasies and joys of the redeemed in 
heaven. Sometimes we dream that we are dead, 
and that we still survive. In dreams the rich and 
the poor meet together ; and the servant is free 
from his master. There the hungry and thirsty eat 
and drink and are satisfied. There shipwrecked 
sailors and ghostly prisoners of Salisbury and An- 
dersonville are at home, and in want of nothing. 
There the weary are at rest, the weak are strong, 
the timid brave, the despairing confident. There 
the burdened throw off their burdens, or forsooth 
bend under heavier ones than this world ever 
knows. There the guilty feel pangs of remorse 
sharper and more intolerable than those of Cain or 
Judas. There Richard the Third sees his tent 
filled with the ghosts of his murdered victims, all 
demanding vengeance on his guilty head, and strik- 
ing more terrors into his troubled soul — 

" Than could the substance of ten thousand soldiers 
Armed in proof, and led by .... Richmond." 

There the sorrowing boy of the "Wizard of the North 
falls asleep in a dreary cabin of the wilderness, and 
at once he is far away. 



The Teaching of Nature and Reason. 43 

" That hut's dark walls he sees no more, 
His foot is on the marble floor, 
And o'er his head the dazzling spars 
Gleam like a firmament of stars." 

Coleridge, in profound sleep, sees the gorgeous 

beauty, and hears the entrancing music of the 

stately pleasure-dome of Kubla Khan, — 

" Where Alph, the sacred river, ran 
Through caverns measureless to man, 
Down to a sunless sea." 

Longfellow's negro slave in South Carolina, 
asleep — 

" Beside the ungathered rice . . . 
His sickle in his hand," 

is in Africa again, without having endured for a 

second time the horrors of the middle passage ; he 

is a king again ; he is with his children and his 

dark-eyed queen, their kisses on his cheeks ; he 

rides at a furious speed along the Niger's banks, 

and over the far-reaching plains ; he hears the 

sounds of freedom echoing from the desert to the 

sea, and passing — 

" Like a glorious roll of drums 
Through the triumph of his dream ; " 

but in the morning, — 

" He did not feel the driver's whip, 

Nor the burning heat of day ; 
For death had illumined the Land of Sleep, 

And his lifeless body lay 
A worn-out fetter that the soul 

Had broken and thrown away ! " 



44 TJie Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

Not that all dreams are such as these ; not that 
all persons ever have such dreams ; but sometimes 
some persons do ; and this shows that the mind 
may be active, when the senses are inactive and 
closed as if in death, for sleep is so much like death, 
that it has been called his brother. These phe- 
nomena of dreams do not prove indeed that the 
mental operations can be performed independently 
of the body, but they do prove that they may be 
performed independently of the senses ; and analogy 
would lead us to infer that they may be performed 
independently of that physical organism of which 
the senses are a part. So strong is the argument 
drawn from this analogy, that fourteen hundred 
years ago, a Carthaginian physician, Gennadius, 
was led to believe in the immortality of the soul, 
by dreaming that a young man came to him and 
reasoned with him on the subject, arguing that as 
he could see with his mind's eye, when his bodily 
eyes were closed in sleep, so he would find that 
when all his senses should be destroyed in death, 
he would still see, and hear, and feel, with the sen- 
sibilities of his soul, which would survive the disso- 
lution of the body. 1 

If any one, for the purpose of weakening or de- 
stroying this argument drawn from the operations 
of the mind in sleep, should suggest that the phe- 

1 Augustine, Ep. clix. Ad Euoduin. 



The Teaching of Nature and Reason. 45 



nomena of dreaming pertain to a state interme- 
diate between sleeping and waking ; while in sound 
sleep, a person never dreams, but is in a state of 
absolute unconsciousness, his mental powers being, 
like his bodily senses, completely dormant ; we 
should say that this is a point to be proved, and a 
point which all the known facts that bear upon it, 
go to disprove. It would avail nothing in proof of 
this position, to say that a person awaking from 
sound sleep has no recollection of having been 
dreaming, for there is a wide difference between a 
dream and the recollection of it, or between a train 
of thought and the remembrance of it. It is no un- 
common thing for one to have no remembrance of 
thoughts that have passed through the mind while 
awake ; and in sleep, persons often show undeni- 
able signs of mental activity or dreaming, without 
having the least recollection, on awaking, of having 
been dreaming. In somnambulism, the mind is 
certainly active, and very active ; but still, on 
awaking, the somnambulist has no recollection of 
what he has been doing or thinking. On this sub- 
ject, Sir William Hamilton says, " In this remark- 
able state (somnambulism), the various mental fac- 
ulties are usually in a higher degree of power than 
in the natural. The patient has recollections of 
what he has wholly forgotten. He speaks lan- 
guages of which, when awake, he remembers not a 



46 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

word. If he use a vulgar dialect when out of this 
state, in it he employs only a correct and elegant 
phraseology. The imagination, the sense of pro- 
priety, and the faculty of reasoning are all in gen- 
eral exalted. The bodily powers are in high ac- 
tivity, and under the complete control of the will ; 
and, it is well known, persons in this state have 
frequently performed feats, of which, when out of 
it, they would not even have imagined the possi- 
bility. And what is even more remarkable, the 
difference of the faculties in the two states seems 
not confined merely to a difference in degree. For 
it happens, for example, that a person who has no 
ear for music when awake, shall, in his somnambu- 
lic crisis, sing with the utmost correctness, and with 
full enjoyment of his performance. Under this 
affection, persons sometimes live half their life-time, 
alternately between the normal and abnormal states, 
and performing the ordinary functions of life indif- 
ferently in both, with this distinction, that if the 
patient be dull and doltish when he is said to be 
awake, he is comparatively alert and intelligent when 
nominally asleep. I am in possession of three 
works written during the crisis by three different 
somnambulists. Now it is evident that conscious- 
ness, and an exalted consciousness, must be allowed 
in somnambulism. This cannot be denied; but 
mark what follows. It is the neculiarity of som- 



The Teaching of Nature and Reason. 47 



nambulism, — it is the differential quality by which 
that state is distinguished from the state of dream- 
ing, — that we have no recollection, when we awake, 
of what has occurred during its continuance. Con- 
sciousness is thus cut in two ; memory does not con- 
nect the train of consciousness in the one state with 
the train of consciousness in the other. When the 
patient again relapses into the state of somnambu- 
lism, he again remembers all that had occurred dur- 
ing every former alternative of that state ; but he 
not only remembers this, he recalls also the events 
of his normal existence ; so that, whereas the pa- 
tient in his somnambulic crisis has a memory of his 
whole life, in his waking intervals he has a 
memory only of half his life." 1 He also quotes 
" that great thinker," Kant, as " distinctly main- 
taining that we always dream when asleep ; that to 
cease to dream would be to cease to live ; and that 
those who fancy they have not dreamt, have only 
forgotten their dream." Besides this, he quotes 
" the substance of a remarkable essay on sleep, by 
one of the most distinguished of the philosophers 
of France," Jouffroy, in whom there seems to have 
been combined in a remarkable degree " the Eng- 
lish solidity, and the French vivacity of mind," and 
who says, " When we dream, we are certainly 
asleep, and as certainly the mind is not asleep, 
1 The Metaphysics of Sir William Hamilton. 



48 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

because it thinks. It is therefore manifest that the 
mind is frequently awake when the senses are 
asleep ; but it is very far from being proved that 

it ever sleeps with them The fact, then, 

that the mind sometimes wakes while the senses 
are asleep, is thus established ; whereas, the fact 
that it sometimes sleeps along with them is not 
established ; the probability, therefore, is that it 
wakes always." In view of all the considerations 
which he presents, Sir William Hamilton says, " In 
the case of sleep, therefore, so far is it from being 
proved that the mind is at any moment uncon- 
scious, that the result of observation would incline 
us to the opposite conclusion." Prof. Francis 
Bo wen, also, in his Lowell Lectures on " The Appli- 
cation of Metaphysical and Ethical Science to the 
Evidences of Keligion," says, " There is no good 
reason to believe that sleep ever extends beyond 
the body, or suspends the exercise of a single func- 
tion of intellectual life." Such is the carefully 
formed and deliberate judgment of the profoundest 
philosophy on this subject of the soul's continual 
activity in sleep. And if the power of sleep is thus 
to be regarded as never extending beyond the 
body, why should we think that the power of 
death, the brother of sleep, ever extends beyond 
the body ? 

The idea of death is often in our minds ; the 



The Teaching of Nature and Reason. 49 



word is often on our lips. But what is death ? Is 
it anything more than a complete dissolution of a 
material organism, that is often partially destroyed 
in this life, and that, without in the least affecting 
or injuring those powers of thought, which, for the 
present, are manifested through it? The loss of 
the senses, sight and hearing, is a partial death 
often endured in life ; and the hands and feet often 
perish before as well as after death ; but this loss 
of limbs and organs has no effect on the intellect- 
ual and moral character of the mind, or upon the 
mind or soul itself. More than this, the body is 
continually undergoing a process of change in all 
its parts ; the materials that compose it decay, and 
are renewed day by clay ; so that probably there is 
not a single particle of matter in the body of any 
living person, the same that was in it seven, or in- 
deed, three years ago. 1 But so far is the soul from 
being affected by this decay and change, that it 
seems to stand back behind the framework of the 

1 " The materials of our bodies are being constantly re- 
newed, and the great mass of their structure changes in less 
than a year. . . . The rapidity of the change has not been 
accurately determined. Some authors state that the great 
mass of the body changes every month ; and when we 
consider the large quantities of water, carbonic acid, and 
ammonia daily secreted, the statement appears credible ; but 
in the absence of direct proof, we have set the limit unneces- 
sarily high in order to avoid the slightest exaggeration " 
Josiah P. Cooke's Religion and Chemistry, p. 103. 
4 



50 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

body, like a musician behind his instrument, or like 
an engineer behind his engine, or like the occu- 
pant of a house within its walls, distinct and sepa- 
rate from its materials, looking out through its 
windows, using its apartments as he will, but en- 
tirely independent of their decay. Thus the soul 
looks out from the body, and communicates with 
the outer world through the windows and doors of 
its senses, uses its limbs and organs for its own 
various purposes, sympathizes with them in their 
manifold experiences, but is itself distinct and sepa- 
rate from them, independent of them, uninjured by 
their dissolution, so that we may say, — 

" The soul, secured in her existence, smiles 
At the drawn dagger, and defies its point." 

Objections against these views have sometimes 
been drawn from the acknowledged influence of 
the body over the mind ; but the mind has at least 
as much influence over the body as the body has 
over the mind. If it is true that mental disease is 
often caused by disease of the body, it is also true 
that bodily disease is often induced by purely men- 
tal states. If a blow upon the head can stun or 
paralyze the frame, and produce insensibility ; the 
mind has power to send the hot blood burning to 
the face, or make it pale, and this too sometimes at 
will. Some actors have had the power, when they 
chose, to flush the face, as if with shame, or to 
blanch it with an ashy pallor as of death. At least 



The Teaching of Nature and Reason. 51 



one instance has been recorded of a man who could 
so feign death as to pass the most careful scientific 
tests. And sometimes the influence of the mind 
upon the body is such as to cause insensibility as 
complete as is caused by outward physical violence. 
Let a person, in ordinary health and strength both 
of body and mind, receive a letter conveying some 
sad intelligence ; on reading it he may fall in a 
swoon, insensible, as if struck by a sudden, stunning 
blow. Such things have often occurred ; and they 
show the marvelous power of the mind over the 
body. Dr. Kane once said, " The soul can lift 
the body out of its boots : " and he gave the following 
instance of its power over the body. He said : 
" When our captain was dying, — T say dying : I 
have seen scurvy enough to know. ... I never 
saw a case so bad that either lived or died ; men 
usually die of it long before they are as ill as he 
was, — there was trouble aboard : there might be 
mutiny. ... I felt that he owed even the repose 
of dying to the service. I went down to his bunk, 
and shouted in his ear, ' Mutiny ! captain, mutiny ! ' 
He shook off the cadaveric stupor. ' Set me up,' 
said he, 6 and order these fellows before me.' He 
heard their complaint, ordered punishment, and 
from that hour convalesced." Weil did his biog- 
rapher call the statement of this fact " a j)earl." 1 

1 Biography of Elisha Kent Kane, by William Elder, pp. 
251, 252. 



52 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 



Passing now to other considerations, that should 
not be omitted here, our attention is arrested by 
the fact that man's whole physical system, his 
organs of locomotion, his erect posture, his hands 
curiously formed with cunning joints, and capable 
of an infinite variety of movements, his head like a 
majestic dome surmounting and crowning the mate- 
rial structure, and free to look before and after, 
above as well as below, the wondrous organs of 
speech, the marvelous powers of expression in 
countenance and attitude, and the control which he 
can exercise over his various desires, appetites, and 
passions, — all declare the presence and action of 
an indwelling, directing, controlling mind. The 
voice is an instrument of mind, and like that com- 
plicated and grandest of all instruments of music, 
the organ, it cannot be used without intelligence : 
for idiots never talk. The act of walking involves 
intelligence, and what a thrill of joy does the 
mother feel when first her child can stand alone, 
and take a single step ; for in that act she sees the 
triumph of the growing mind in the growing body, 
and a new declaration of the truth that " There is a 
spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty 
giveth them understanding." The dominion over 
nature which, in the beginning, God gave to man, 
is attained and swayed only by his powers of mind ; 
for physically, he is the most helpless and dependent 



The Teaching of Nature and Reason. 53 



of all living creatures ; but through his powers of 
mind, by the exercise of reason and inventive gen- 
ius, he makes himself clothing and shelter, imple- 
ments of labor and weapons of warfare ; he circum- 
vents, ensnares, and tames or destroys wild beasts, 
levels forests, bridges rivers, sails the seas in ships, 
turns the stubborn wilderness into fruitful fields, 
makes the ox pass under his yoke and the horse 
obey his bit and bridle, makes the winds and the 
waters turn his wheels and waft his ships as obedi- 
ent servants, evokes from water the mighty force 
of steam, and makes it do his bidding, grind in his 
mills, and drive his most ponderous and his most 
delicate machinery, yea, calls down from the clouds 
the swift and fearful lightning, and makes it run as 
his obedient messenger from land to land, across 
the continents, and under the seas, delivering his 
messages on the other side of the globe even while 
he is writing them. Upon the different species of 
plants and animals, man can superinduce manifold 
varieties, maintain and perpetuate their peculiarities, 
as in our domestic animals, grains, fruits, and 
flowers ; and this is a constant exhibition of the 
superiority of his mind over nature. Thus in 
virtue, not of the body, but of the mind, man has 
dominion over nature ; as in the day when God 
created him in his own image and likeness, He said 
to him, " Have dominion over the fish of the sea, 



54 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

and over the fowl of the air, and over every living 
thing that moveth upon the earth." More than 
this, too, and grander than this dominion over 
nature, is man's dominion over himself. While all 
the tribes of the brute creation are blindly devoted 
to the gratification of their desires and appetites, 
man can exert a power of self-denial and self- 
restraint, self-subjugation and self-control, swaying 
a dominion over himself no less than over the out- 
ward world, and finding in this self-control his 
highest dignity and glory ; as the Scripture says, 
" He that is slow to anger is better than the 
mighty, and he that ruleth his spirit than he that 
taketh a city." These considerations all point 
plainly and unmistakably to the fact that there is in 
man a mind or soul, something distinct from the 
body, independent of it, and superior to it. 

There is also in the minds of men a deep, inborn, 
indestructible conviction that the body is not the 
man himself, but rather his dwelling-place, his 
possession, his instrument. Plato gave utterance to 
this conviction when he said, " The shoemaker and 
the harper are to be distinguished from the hand 
and feet which they use ; .... a man is not the 
same as his own body ; .... he is the user of the 
body ; . . . . and the user of the body is the 
soul ; " 1 and Cicero, when he said, " We are not 
1 Alcibiades, I. 



The Teaching of Nature and Reason. 55 

mere bodies ; nor, when I speak to you, do I speak 
to your body ; . . . . for the body is, as it were, a 
vase or some receptacle of the soul ; " 1 and Job, 
when he described men as "them that dwell in 
houses of clay ; " and the apostles Peter and Paul, 
when they spoke of the body as an " earthly house," 
" tent," or " tabernacle." In all the different lan- 
guages of mankind, the various members of the 
body are called organs, and men speak of them as 
their own. They say " my hand," " my foot," " my 
tongue," " my brain," thus giving involuntary 
expression to the conviction that there is some- 
thing in man, a mind or soul, which is the man 
himself, inhabiting the body, possessing it, moving 
it, controlling it, using it as his own. 

The fact of this deep, strong, irrepressible, uni- 
versal conviction of our race, and the process of 
thought by which it is attained or confirmed, has 
been well expressed in the following lines of philo- 
sophic poetry, which, in some reflecting mood, 
almost every person might have uttered : — 

" Am I but what I seem, mere flesh and blood ? 
A branching channel, and a mazy flood ? 
The purple stream that through my vessels glides, 
Dull and unconscious flows, like common tides ; 
The pipes, through which the circling juices stray, 
Are not the thinking I, no more than they. 
This frame compacted with transcendent skill 

1 Tuscul. Disput. Lib. i. cap. xx. § 52. 



56 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

Of moving joints, obedient to my will, 
Nursed from the fruitful glebe, like yonder tree, 
Waxes and wastes ; I call it mine, not me. 
New matter still the mouldering mass sustains, 
The mansion changed, the tenant still remains, 
And from the fleeting stream repaired by food, 
Distinct as is the swimmer from the flood." 

These views of the body and the soul are so 
natural, so consistent, and so completely in harmony 
with the facts of consciousness and experience, that 
it seems strange that any should ever doubt the 
twofoldness of our human constitution, or deny that 
we have a mind or soul, distinct from the body, supe- 
rior to it, and capable of a distinct, separate, and in- 
dependent existence beyond the grave. If the con- 
siderations that have been presented do not prove 
positively that man is immortal, they do prove that 
he has a soul that may be immortal, or continue to 
exist when the body has been dissolved in death. 

But beyond this it should be said that there are 
positive intimations of the immortality of the soul 
in the constitution of the soul itself, as in nature 
and reason ; intimations so numerous, plain, and 
strong, that they have been sufficient to persuade 
almost all men of all nations and ages, to believe in 
immortality ; and they are specially significant and 
convincing when viewed in the light of Chris- 
tianity. 

First among these intimations of immortality is 



The Teaching of Nature and Reason. 57 

the natural, universal, and irrepressible desire or 
instinct of immortality. The argument as stated 
by Addison is this : — 

" WTience this pleasing hope, this fond desire, 
This longing after immortality ? 
Or whence this constant dread, and inward horror, 
Of falling into naught ? 
'Tis the divinity that stirs within us ; 
'Tis Heaven itself that points out an hereafter." 

And this is a sound argument, though occasion- 
ally a philosopher, falsely so called, may call it 
rubbish. It is a sound argument, because it rests 
upon the truth that God is faithful to his works 
and word alike ; that He cannot deny Himself ; that 
He cannot make the soul to be a lie to itself ; that 
He cannot make the soul with desires for which He 
has provided no gratification. Not in mockery has 
He made any of his creatures, with their natural 
wants, desires, appetites, and tendencies, of whatso- 
ever kind they be. For every natural want or 
desire of fish or insect, bird or beast, or human 
kind, God has provided some suitable reality cor- 
responding to it, for its gratification ; food for our 
hunger ; water to allay our thirst ; light to en- 
lighten the eye ; sweet sounds to charm the ear ; 
society to gratify the social instinct ; truth answer- 
ing to the demands of the intellect ; beauty to our 
aesthetic nature ; duty and its rewards to the con- 
science ; God himself to our religious nature. Not 



58 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

that every particular wish of every individual is to 
be gratified, so that no man can ever want a good 
dinner, or a little money, without having it ; for 
this is not the argument, though often it has been 
thus misrepresented. It would be very foolish to 
say that if any one wishes for anything he will 
certainly have it ; but this folly is not ours. For 
we are reasoning not from occasional and accidental 
wishes for particular things, but from those original, 
universal, and perpetual desires of our race, out of 
which the wishes of individuals for particular 
things spring. A person's wish for any particular 
article of food may or may not be gratified, but the 
natural and universal desire for food has not been 
left without an abundant gratification, provided 
from the beginning by Him " who openeth his hand 
and satisfieth the desire of every living thing." 
To certain families of birds He has given an in- 
stinct of migration, a desire not artificial but 
natural, not sujDerinduced but original, not acci- 
dental but inherent, not special but universal, not 
occasional but constant and permanent ; and He 
has provided certain suitable lands to receive those 
birds of passage, when, in obedience to their in- 
born instinct, they take their annual journey from 
the north to the south, or from the south to 
the north ; just as He had provided the land 
of Canaan for Abraham when in obedience to a 



The Teaching of Nature and Reason. 59 



sacred instinct, or the divine command, he went 
forth from Haran, "not knowing whither he 
went." Thus, in virtue of his own faithfulness, 
God has provided some sufficient gratification cor- 
responding to every natural, original, inherent, 
universal, constant, and permanent desire of his 
creatures. Not in wantonness or mockery has he 
implanted any such desire in the souls of men, 
unless it be that for immortality ; and can it be 
that there is no future life, no world to come, an- 
swering to our deep, inborn, inextinguishable long- 
ing for immortality ? 

But not only have men thus desired immortality ; 
they have also confidently expected it. Like the 
conviction that there is a God, this faith in im- 
mortality has been well nigh universal. Though 
often held in a dim, shadowy, grotesque, and mon- 
strous form, it has been held fast by almost all 
from the beginning. In one of the oldest of all 
existing records of the thoughts of men, an Egyp- 
tian " papyrus, brown and crumbling, covered 
with mysterious characters, traced two-and-thirty 
centuries ago, by the hand of the scribe Annana," 
there is a singular story " which has recently been 
deciphered," and which throughout " implies a 
belief not only in the transmigration of souls, but 
also in the separate existence of the soul from the 
body." 1 Before Christ came into the world, 
1 J. J. Stewart's Perowne's Immortality, pp. 42, 43. 



60 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

Cicero argued from the consent of all nations that 
souls are immortal ; and modern writers, from 
Theodore Parker to Professor Bartlett, in his 
" Life and Death Eternal/' have made the same 
appeal for the same purpose. And there is much 
force in the argument. For this almost universal 
faith in immortality comes not from the senses, nor 
from reasoning, nor from learning, but from the 
original, uninstructed, unstudied impulses of the 
soul, which thus seems to be consciously made for 
immortality, and which believes in immortality, not 
in consequence of, but in spite of, all the decay and 
dissolution that is manifested to the senses in the 
world around us. Everything that we see in 
nature, all things that are material, are subject to 
decay, but still men everywhere believe that there 
is something within us that is undecaying. "We 
know that our own bodies, and those of all earthly 
creatures, are mortal, but still we believe that there 
is something within us that is immortal. Our 
familiar poet, in his " Psalm of Life," gives expres- 
sion to a thought or conviction that is deepest and 
strongest in the common heart of humanity, when 
he says that the decree, — 

" ' Dust thou art, to dust returnest/ 
Was not spoken of the soul." 

And if the reasons that have been given by 
many in many lands, for their faith in immortality, 



The Teaching of Nature and Reason, 61 

are unsatisfactory, sometimes puerile, this only 
shows the strength of this inborn disposition of 
men to believe in immortality ; because it thus 
appears that they will believe in it, whether they 
are able to give good and sufficient reasons for 
their faith or not. And is not this a strong proof 
of immortality, that men should thus almost uni- 
versally believe in it, notwithstanding all that the 
senses witness of the decay of earthly things, and 
when millions hold the faith, not as a result of 
argument, an induction of science, or a deduction 
of reason and philosophy, but as the spontaneous 
dictate of the heart ? If it is true that " Plato's 
famous treatise has vastly more of sweet persuasion 
in it than of solid argument," then it is also true 
that in human nature as God has made it, there 
is something that is in sympathy with his conclu- 
sion, that receives his doctrine at once, declares 
that it is " sweet ; " and is itself a proof of immor- 
tality, as our moral feelings which grow out of our 
moral constitution prove that there is something 
right and something wrong, and a moral govern- 
ment of God, under which we exist. 

Again, it is to be observed that no instances or 
traces of annihilation can be be found anywhere in 
nature. In those grosser forms of matter which 
our senses can perceive, there is a continual process 
of change, growth and decay, but no annihilation. 



62 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

The plants and animals die and are resolved into 
their original elements, dust and gases, but these 
elements still remain in existence, and are ready to 
enter into new combinations, and to become organ- 
ized perhaps into other and higher forms of life ; 
and not one of their atoms is ever annihilated. In 
like manner, those more ethereal substances or 
forces, which, like light, heat, and electricity, elude 
many of our senses and all our powers of analysis, 
do not lose their existence, though, like Proteus, 
they change their form. The doctrine of the 
Correlation and Conservation of Physical Forces 
absolutely excludes the notion of annihilation. 
But the mind of man, being immaterial, uncom- 
pounded, and undissolvable, must retain its own 
distinct, individual, and conscious existence, or 
there is an absolute destruction or annihilation, 
such as there is no instance or intimation of in 
nature, for it " cannot but by annihilating die." 
And can it be that the mind, for which all nature 
was made to minister, should thus be doomed to 
annihilation, and still 

" The great world spin forever down the ringing grooves of 
change" ? 

Once more we may observe, that in all the works 
of God of which we have any knowledge, every- 
thing, from the least to the greatest, is fitted to 
its place, or adapted to its end or destiny. Every 



The Teaching of Nature and Reason. 63 



plant and seed, the climbing vine and the sturdy 
oak, the tropic palm and the northern pine, the fly- 
ing insect and the crawling worm, the fishes of the 
sea, the beasts of the field, and the fowls of the air, 
are each and all fitted to their place and adapted 
to the end for which thev were made ; and though 
there are many things of which we do not know 
the uses, or all the uses, we do not know of any- 
thing that has been made in vain. But nothing in 
the earth beneath or in the heavens above is more 
plainly and undeniably fitted to its place or adapted 
to its end and destiny, than the soul is fitted for im- 
mortality ; its faculties and powers need the scope 
of immortality for their full development and 
exercise ; if it is not immortal it would need no 
additional capacities, faculties, or powers to fit it for 
immortality ; and therefore, if it fails of its immortal 
destiny, it fails entirely and absolutely of its great 
end, — fails, and is cut off at the very commence- 
ment of its career, like a bud blighted before it 
blossoms, or a promise that is broken both to the 
ear and to the heart. And while God is faithful 
to Himself, to his character, and to his words and 
works, while God is God, can the soul fail of 
immortality ? 

Another argument has been drawn from what is 
often seen of the consciousness, self-possession, and 
triumphant bearing of the soul in death, even 66 up 



64 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

to the very moment of dissolution." To show how 
" prophetic of immortality " are these phenomena, 
a recent writer has said : " I have repeatedly stood 
by the death-bed of one attenuated by long infirm- 
ity ; every vital process clogged, the pulse inter- 
mittent, the blood already becoming, stagnant ; and 
I have seen the dying still in the full vigor of his 
intellect, master of his position, clearer and stronger 
in thought and judgment than any one of the by- 
standers, addressing appropriate counsel or consola- 
tion to each of the afflicted circle, dictating mes- 
sages of love to the absent, and leaving no person or 
interest forgotten that had the remotest right to a 
place in his remembrance From these phe- 
nomena of approaching death the argument is obvi- 
ous and strong. Did the soul die with the body, we 
should certainly expect that it would betray along 
with the body symptoms of impending dissolution, 
that its light would be dimmed and flickering, its con- 
sciousness confused, its power of consecutive thought 
impeded, its memory clouded, its hold on wonted 
beliefs relaxed. But if at that last hour it manifests 
all and more than all of vitality that was ever wit- 
nessed in the prime and joy of its earthly being, 
there is a strong presumption that it is destined to 
survive the death change, and to put off its worn- 
out garment for its ascension-robe." 1 

1 Rev. A. P. Peabody, D. D., Christianity the Religion of 
Nature, pp. 184-186. 



The Teaching of Nature and Reason. 65 

Another kindred argument may be drawn from 
what has been called " the beauty of death/' a 
beauty which belongs to man alone of all the crea- 
tures of the earth. There are few whose attention 
has not been struck with the exceeding radiant 
beauty which sometimes streams forth from the 
features of the dying, and often lingers long upon 
the features of the dead. Nothing of the kind is 
ever seen in the brute creation. " The finest and 
noblest horse is a repulsive and ugly object when 
lying dead on the field of battle," though the face 
of his dead rider, lying by his side, may wear a look 
of transcendent beauty. Whence is this difference ? 
Whence but from that spirit or soul in man which 
gives expression to his face in life, and often leaves 
an impression of its calm serenity and victorious faith 
that abides long upon the features, after it has left 
the body. 

Man has also a regard for his kind after death, 
of which the other creatures of the earth know 
nothing. He buries his dead, respects and cares 
for their burial-places, rears above them enduring 
monuments of bronze or stone ; and in this regard 
for his insensible body, whether it be embalmed, or 
burned, or buried, man shadows forth the instinct 
of his soul for immortality, or the real destiny that 
awaits him after death. 

Another consideration of no little importance is 



66 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 



that most persons, if not all, find it absolutely im- 
possible even to imagine themselves as annihilated. 
Every one knows that he must die ; every one 
probably has thought of himself as dead ; but 
whenever we think of ourselves as dead, we think 
of ourselves as somehow still existing, perhaps 
as viewing or thinking about the appearance or 
disposition of our remains, interested in what is 
taking place on earth, and observing the accom- 
plishment of its destinies and those of the uni- 
verse ; and thus it seems that u Man never does, 
nor can view himself as in a state of non-exist- 
ence."' This remarkable fact indicates not only 
that man is made for immortality, but that the fact 
is indelibly enstamped upon or ingrained into his 
constitution as a human being. 

Other considerations might be presented, but 
these are sufficient to show how nature and reason 
teach that the soul does not die with the body, but 
survives its dissolution, and rises phoenix-like from 
the ashes of physical decay to an immortal destiny. 
Even if the light of nature is not sufficient to dis- 
pel all doubts and make the doctrine certain, still it 
has been sufficient to make the whole world, with 
only a few exceptions, believe it. u As matter of fact, 
the race have believed it. TVe certainly have testi- 
mony showing that the expectation of another life 
existed throughout the tribes of the Western Conti- 



The Teaching of Nature and Reason. 67 

nent, from Greenland to Patagonia. African tribes, 
New Zealanders, Feejees, Sandwich Islanders, 
Kamtschadales, Philippine Islanders, Papuans, 
Borneans, Chinese, have held the belief in all parts 
of the world. It was the doctrine of the ancient 
Veclas and of the Egyptian monuments ; it lies 
embedded in the Greek and Roman mythologies ; it 
was held by Persian, Etruscan, Celt, Gaul, and 
Scandinavian. In modified forms it is received by 
five hundred million Brahminists and Buddhists to- 
day. The exceptions are apparently limited to 
two classes : First, perhaps, certain tribes, too de- 
graded to have developed the full functions of hu- 
manity ; secondly, certain individuals and sects in 
very advanced states of society, who have deliber- 
ately trained themselves as doubters, as the Epi- 
curians of Greece and Rome, the Sadducees of 
Judea, the Revolutionists of France, and the An- 
nihilationists of England and America." 1 So, like 
the belief that there is a God, this belief in immor- 
tality has been well-nigh universal ; and there must 
be some strong reasons in nature and the human 
soul, to compel such universal faith. 

A striking illustration of the views, and a strong 
confirmation of this doctrine, was given by a man 
who died in Portsmouth, N. H., in 1847, at the 

1 Professor S. C. Bartlett's Life and Death Eternal, Preface, 
p. vi. 



68 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

age of thirty-two, after having been for nine years 
unable to walk. His name was James Kennard, Jr. 
" When just entering upon active life and the full 
duties of manhood, [he] was attacked by the terri- 
ble disease which physicians call anchylosis, or 
stiffening of the joints. First one knee refused its 
office, and as this was accompanied with great pain, 
and perhaps the nature of the complaint was mis- 
taken, the leg was amputated, in the hope that the 
evil would stop there. But the disease soon passed 
into the other limb, stiffened the remaining knee, 
and then crept slowly from joint to joint, making 
each inflexible as it passed, till the whole lower 
portion of the body was nearly as rigid as iron, and 
the muscles had no longer any office to perform. 
Gradually, then, it moved upward, leaving the 
vertebral column inflexible ; the arms and hands, 
which in anticipation of its approach had been 
bent into a position most convenient for the suf- 
ferer, stiffened there ; the neck refused to turn or 
bend, and the body became almost as immovable as 
if it had been carved out of the rock. Years 
passed between the first appearance of the disease 
and this awful completion of its work ; years 
elapsed after the hapless patient was thus hardened 
into stone, and still he lived. Nor was this all ; 
his eyes were attacked ; the sight of one was wholly 
lost, and the other became so exquisitely sensitive, 



The Teaching of Nature and Reason. 69 



that it could seldom be exposed to the light, and 
never but for a few moments at a time. And thus 
he remained for years, blind, immovable, prisoned 
in this house of stone, and echoing, we might sup- 
pose, the affecting exclamation of the Apostle, 
' Who shall deliver me from the body of this death ? ' 
But no word of impatience escaped him ; the mind 
was clear and vigorous, the temper was not soured, 
the affections were as strong and clinging as ever. 
His good sense, his wit, his knowledge of books, 
his interest in the passing topics of the day, made 
his chamber a favorite resort even of those who 
might not have been drawn thither merely by sym- 
pathy for his sufferings ; for not infrequently he 
was still exposed to agonizing pain. But in the 
intervals of this distress, his active mind sought and 
found employment, and numerous contributions 
which this living statue dictated for a periodical 
work are now in print. The secret of his wonder- 
ful composure and gentleness may be told in two 
words, — religious resignation. What says the 
materialist to a case like this ? Was that power- 
less body, maimed, stiffened, blind, hardly animate, 
was that the person, the man, still active, inquisi- 
tive, industrious, generous, and affectionate ? or 
was it only a prison-house in which the fettered 
soul was compelled to await its time of release ? 
I envy not the feelings or the intellect of him who 



70 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

could stand by the bedside of that patient sufferer, 
and still disbelieve that 6 There is a spirit in man, 
and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them 
understanding.' " 1 

On this subject there is only one reasonable con- 
clusion that can be reached and held. It is that 
there is a mind or spirit in man, a soul distinct from 
the body, superior to it, independent of it, and 
destined to survive its dissolution in death, and 
pursue its career in other unknown worlds. This 
is the teaching of the highest reason and philosophy 
in ancient and modern times. Cousin says : " Phi- 
losophy demonstrates that there is in man a prin- 
ciple which cannot perish. But that this principle 
will reappear in another world with the same order 
of faculties, and the same laws that it has in this 
world ; that it bears there the consequences of the 
good and evil deeds that it has committed; that 
the virtuous man there holds converse with the 
virtuous, and that the wicked there suffers with the 
wicked, — this is a sublime probability which per- 
haps escapes in the rigor of demonstration, but 
which the secret desire of the heart, and the uni- 
versal assent of nations justify and consecrate." 
That the immortality of the soul is " a sublime prob- 
ability " on which men, if they are wise, will act — 
this is the teaching of nature and reason. 

1 Francis Bowen's Lowell Lectures, pp. 62-64. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE TEACHING OF THE BIBLE. 

Having shown in the preceding chapter that 
the immortality of the soul is a doctrine of Natural 
Religion as well as of the Christian Church, we 
pass now to inquire whether it is also a doctrine of 
the Bible. 

This is a question of the utmost interest and 
importance ; one that we wish to consider ; and one 
that we could not set aside or pass by without no- 
tice, even if we did not wish to consider it. For, 
granting that our views of the soul, as presented in 
the preceding chapters, are those of reason and 
philosophy and of Christendom, many will still wish 
to know what the Bible teaches on the subject, and 
the wish should be met with a thorough and candid 
examination of the Bible itself. Therefore we 
shall proceed to show that our views are Scriptural 
as well as reasonable and orthodox, while the 
notion that at death the soul perishes, or falls into 
any state of unconsciousness or nothingness, is as 
unscriptural as it is irrational and heretical. 

Turning to the Bible, then, we find that this 



72 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

doctrine of the soul, which we have found to be 
taught by nature and reason, and to have been held 
by the Christian Church from the beginning, is taught 
by the inspired writers also in many ways, at one 
time directly and at another indirectly, sometimes 
with more and sometimes with less of plainness and 
positiveness, but most plainly and positively in the 
New Testament, where it stands forth as a fact 
declared " in language beyond the uncertainties of 
conjecture, the refinements of allegory, or even the 
bright coloring of hope ; " a fact of which we may 
feel assured and certain. 

The Bible recognizes the distinction between 
the body and the soul of man ; between the life of 
the one and the life of the other ; between that 
which is animal and that which is spiritual ; be- 
tween that which is of the earth earthly, and des- 
tined at death to return to the earth, and that which 
is of unearthly origin and nature, and destined at 
death to return to God who gave it. 

In the account given by Moses of the creation of 
man, it is said that " God created man in his own 
image, in the image of God created He him" 
(Gen. i. 27). This language must be understood 
as referring to man's spiritual and immortal nature, 
or to those rational and moral powers of the human 
mind, which, though finite, bear some real resem- 
blance to God's infinite attributes, and by the pos- 



The Teaching of the Bible. 73 

session of which we are most widely distinguished 
from the brute creation. For " God is a spirit," 
and " the Father of spirits." Therefore his image 
and likeness in man must be a spiritual likeness, 
the resemblance of our intellectual and moral fac- 
ulties, those of the will, the intellect, the affections, 
and the conscience, to his attributes of power, wis- 
dom, goodness, and justice. So in the New Testa- 
ment the image of God is represented as a moral 
image, that is, as pertaining not to the body but to 
the mind. " The saints and faithful brethren in 
Christ " are addressed by St. Paul, as those who 
" have put off the old man with his deeds, and have 
put on the new man, which is renewed in knowl- 
edge after the image of Him that created him" 
(Col. iii. 10). Whether this language be under- 
stood as referring primarily and specially to what 
is commonly called " regeneration," or to " renova- 
tion," it certainly refers not to a physical but to a 
moral change in man ; a change which is not of the 
flesh fleshly, but of the spirit spiritual (John iii. 
6) ; a change which is properly and Scripturally 
described as a renewal in the spirit of the mind 
(Eph. iv. 22). This change or renewal the 
Apostle declares to be a renewal after the image of 
the Creator ; and whether by this expression he 
makes a direct allusion to the account of man's 
creation in the book of Genesis, or not ; it is plain 



74: The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

and undeniable that the expression, " the image of 
God/' has a moral or spiritual significance. 

Moreover, God has no body in the likeness of 
which He could have made man. Those funda- 
mental concejDtions of our religion, that God is a 
spirit, infinite, omnipresent, invisible, a being " whom 
no man hath seen or can see," absolutely exclude the 
notion that He has any material form, anything 
that we call body. And if, in opposition to this 
view, any one should say that, in the Bible, our 
bodily limbs and organs are often ascribed to God, 
as when mention is made of the words of his mouth 
and the works of his hands, his outstretched arm 
and the glorious place of his feet, his eyes that are 
ever upon the righteous, and his ears that are open 
to their cry, and that this proves that He has a 
body like our own, then we should reply that by 
the same kind of argument it could be proved that 
He is a mighty bird ; for the Psalmist says, " He 
shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his 
wings shalt thou trust ; n the saying that He is a rock 
would also prove that He is such a material mass 
as that which forms the cliffs of Mount Sinai or 
Mount Washington ; the saying that He is a consum- 
ing fire would prove that He is a flame like that of 
Nebuchadnezzar' s burning fiery furnace ; and the 
saying that He is a sun and a shield would prove 
that his physical constitution is that of the great 



The Teaching of the Bible. 



75 



central luminary of our solar system, and also that 
He is a piece of defensive armor like that of Ho- 
mer's marvelous tale, forged for Achilles by Yulcan's 
art. If these different representations are under- 
stood literally, they contradict and destroy each 
other, for in no literal sense can it be true that God 
has the body of a man and of a bird, and that He is 
also a rock, a consuming fire, a sun and a shield, 
though certain features of his character, works, and 
relations to his creatures, may be very fitly and ex- 
pressively shadowed forth, symbolized, or illustrated 
by these images ; and these diversified representa- 
tions serve the special purpose of showing that no 
one of them is to be understood literally, but all 
figuratively, as Blair's " Lectures on Rhetoric," and 
a score of other similar works, will teach all who 
need instruction in the origin, nature, and common 
use of figurative language. 

It has sometimes been said, however, that those 
who hold these views of God, the soul, and heaven, 
spiritualize the Scriptures too much. It has even 
been said sneeringly that if the language of the Bible 
is to be understood as we understand it, then we need 
" a spiritual dictionary to give the true spiritual def- 
initions, otherwise we should be under the necessity 
of guessing at the meaning ; 99 and " Who ever heard 
a person claim a spiritual meaning for language 
that had anything but guesswork in his effort?" 



76 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

But the Apostle Paul has given many examples or 
illustrations of the distinction that we make be- 
tween the literal and the figurative use of language ; 
and he has furnished us with the key to this system 
of interpretation which we employ. He makes a 
distinction as plain as it is possible to make it, be- 
tween that which is natural or animal and that 
which is spiritual ; between that which is simply a 
living being, and that which is a quickening or life- 
giving spirit ; between that which is of the earth, 
earthy, and that which is of heaven, heavenly (1 
Cor. xv. 44-46). He speaks expressly of " spirit- 
ual meat," " spiritual drink," and " a spiritual rock " 
(1 Cor. x. 3, 4). He says, "He is not a Jew, 
which is one outwardly ; neither is that circumcis- 
ion, which is outward in the flesh ; but he is a Jew 
which is one inwardly ; and circumcision is that of 
the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter " 
(Rom. ii. 28, 29). He also says, " God hath given 
us ability to be ministers of the new covenant ; not 
of the letter, but of the spirit ; for the letter kill- 
eth, but the spirit giveth life " (2 Cor. iii. 6) . 
And Christ on a certain occasion said to his disci- 
ples, " Take heed and beware of the leaven of the 
Pharisees and of the Sadducees." Through some 
strange unsusceptibility or unspirituality of mind, 
some lack of sympathy with Christ's spirit, they un- 
derstood Him literally as referring to the leaven of 



The Teaching of the Bible. 77 

bread ; but as soon as He perceived their error He 
corrected it, and said, ' ; Plow is it that ye do not 
understand that I was not speaking to you of bread, 
when I told you to beware of the leaven of the 
Pharisees and Sadducees ? Then understood they 
how that He told them to beware not of the leaven 
of bread, but of the doctrine of the Pharisees and 
Sadducees ; " for, as they ought to have understood, 
there is a leaven of impurity and corruption, " mal- 
ice and wickedness," as well as of bread (Matt, 
xvi. 6-12 ; 1 Cor. v. 6-8). Also, on another 
occasion, Christ said to the Jews, " Verily, verily, I 
say unto you, except ye eat the flesh of the Son of 
man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you." 
Many of them, through a strange perversity, under- 
stood Him literally, as the Church of Rome, in her 
doctrine of Transubstantiation, has since understood 
Him literally ; but to correct their error he said, 
" It is the spirit that quickeneth ; the flesh proflt- 
eth nothing ; the words that I speak unto you, they 
are spirit and they are life" (John vi. 53, 63). 
" It is the spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth 
nothing." If it were possible for us, — like canni- 
bals, — literally to eat the flesh of the Son of man, 
and to drink his blood, that would be of no avail 
for our salvation, that would profit us nothing ; 
only through the moral quickening of our souls by 
his quickening word and spirit can we come into a 



78 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

state of grace and salvation. So immeasurably 
does the spirit transcend the letter. There are 
great spiritual realities of which the leaven of 
bread, the manna that fell in the wilderness, the 
water that flowed from the rock that Moses smote, 
the rock itself, the flesh and blood of Christ, the 
wind that bloweth where it listeth, and the baptis- 
mal water, are only symbols. God is a spirit, and 
the father of spirits. The world to come is a spir- 
itual world, into which only those who are disrobed 
of flesh and blood, changed by death, or " in a mo- 
ment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump," 
can enter. Our religion is a spiritual religion, hav- 
ing the least possible to do with what is outward, 
^ with times or seasons, forms or ceremonies, places or 
observances. Its kingdom of heaven is a spiritual 
kingdom, whose coming is not with observation or 
any outward show ; whose throne is set up silently 
in the heart that becomes reconciled and loyal to 
God ; whose dominion is " within ; " and whose 
substance is " righteousness, and peace, and joy in 
the Holy Ghost." Its king is a spiritual king, 
whose sceptre is the truth, and whose voice every 
one that is of the truth obeyeth. Its Saviour is a 
spiritual saviour ; its salvation a spiritual salvation ; 
its regeneration is the beginning of a new spiritual 
life ; its sanctificaiion a continual renewal in the 
spirit of the mind, after the image of the Creator, 



The Teaching of the Bible. 



79 



whom to know, and whose holiness to partake of, is 
our highest life. Towards these spiritual views, 
and this spiritual faith, the Bible from Genesis to 
the Revelation points. 

The declaration that u the Lord God formed man 
of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his 
nostrils the breath of life, and he became a living 
soul" (Gen. ii. 7), points directly and plainly to 
a distinction between the material and the spiritual 
in man ; between that which is of earth and that 
which is not of earth, but from God. The impres- 
sion made upon the mind by this narrative is an im- 
pression of the relative preeminence and inherent 
moral dignity of man. Whatever view one may 
be disposed to take of the meaning of the several 
particular words that are used, this fact, that there 
is something in man of an origin different from that 
of the body, or of the brute creation, lies on the 
surface, and is imbedded in the depths of the pas- 
sage. 

The Hebrew word here used for u soul " is 
tt?P3 (Xephesh), a word which, like our English 
words life, soul, and body, is used with a great 
variety and diversity of meaning. It is used to 
denote the animal life or vital principle, as in the 
expression "life for life" (Deut. xix. 21; Ps. 
lxx. 2) ; an animal or living creature (Gen. i. 21, 
24; ii. 19 ; ix. 10, 12, 15 ; Lev. xi. 10) ; a person, 



80 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul 

whether living or dead (Gen. xlvi. 18 ; Ex. i. 5 : 
Lev. iv. 2 : Num. v. 2 ; vi. 6 ; ix. 6) ; and also, it is 
used, like the Latin word animus, to denote the ra- 
tional mind. soul, or spirit, which in the Scriptures 
is often distinguished from, or opposed to. the body 
or the flesh, and represented as the seat of affection, 
emotion, understanding, and determination. This 
word is used in the declaration, k '- His flesh upon 
Him shall have pain, and his soul within Him shall 
mourn" (Job xiv. 22). and here the distinction 
between it and the flesh is manifest. Also the 
same word is used for the soul by the Psalmist, 
when he says. K Marvelous are thy works : and 
that my soul knoweth right well" (Ps. cxxxix. 
14) ; by Solomon, when he says. " That the soul be 
without knowledge, it is not good*' (Prov. xix. 2) ; 
and by Jonathan, when he says to David, B "What- 
soever thy soul desireth " (or thinketh) " I will even 
do for thee n (1 Sam. xx. 4). Thus the word is used 
sometimes to denote the intelligent, spiritual princi- 
ple in man ; and the passage of which we are speak- 
ing (Gen. ii. 7) certainly represents man as re- 
ceiving, by the inbreathing or inspiration of God, 
something more than was received from the earth 
or from the dust of the ground. 

In the expression u the breath of life," which 
God is said to have breathed into man's nostrils, the 
Hebrew word for " breath" is n!2tT2 (X'shamah), 



The Teaching of the Bible. 81 

a word which is used to denote both the air and the 
breath (Job xxvii. 3 ; xxxvii. 10 ; Isa. ii. 22) ; the 
blast of Jehovah's anger, and the inspiration of his 
Spirit (Isa. xxx. 33 ; Job iv. 9 ; xxxii. 8) ; and also 
the human mind or intellect. This is the word used 
for u inspiration " in the declaration that " There 
is a spirit in man. and the inspiration of the 
Almighty giveth them understanding." It is the 
same word also that is used for " spirit," in the say- 
ing of Solomon, " The spirit of man is the candle 
of the Lord, which searcheth all the chambers of 
the heart" (Prov. xx. 27). Surely this cannot be 
said of the air we breathe, or of the breath ; it must 
be the intellect of a man, that is the candle of the 
Lord, a light shining in a dark place, a torch 
kindled by his hand, and illuminating many a dark 
chamber both within us and around us, as Christ 
called that faculty by which we distinguish things 
that are right and eternal, " the light that is 
within" (Matt. vi. 23). 

Another word used in the Hebrew Scriptures, to 
denote the human mind or spirit, is the word H*n 
(Ru a hh). This word, like those already noticed, is 
used in several different but kindred senses. It is 
used to denote a breath, the breath of the nostrils, 
a breath of air, and the evening breeze, the wind, 
and whatsoever is light or empty as the wind (Job 
ix. 18 ; iv. 9 ; xli. 8 (16) ; Gen. iii. 8 ; Is. vii. 2 
6 



82 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul 



(3) ; Eccl. xi. 4, 5 ; Job viL 7 : Ps. lxxviii. 39) ; 
the vital spirit, or life (Job xii. 10) : the spirit of 
God (Gen. i. 2 ; Ps. cxxxix. 7) ; and the mind or 
soul of man, which is often distinguished from the 
flesh, and which at death is said to return to God, 
while the body returns to dust (Eccl. xii. 7). 
This is the word used for u spirit n when it is said, 
" The spirit of God moved upon the face of the 
waters ; " *• By his spirit He hath garnished the 
heavens ; " a The spirit of God hath made me ; " 
and. u TVhither shall I go from thy spirit ? n (Gen. 
i. 2: Job xxvi. 13; xxxiii. 4; Ps. cxxxix. 7). 
In the first book of the Bible, this word is put in 
contrast with the word flesh, in the Lord's saying, 
u My spirit shall not always strive with man, for 
that he also is flesh" (Gen. vi. 3) ; and by the 
prophets this word is used as the strongest word 
that could be contrasted with the flesh, or set over 
against it. in opposition to it. as in the declaration. 
" The Egyptians are men and not God. and their 
horses are flesh and not spirit " (Isa. xxxi. 3) ; and 
this is the word used for u spirit " by other writers in 
the Bible, when it is said that u There is a spirit in 
man " (Job xxxii. 8) ; that God is u the God of the 
spirits of all flesh " (Xum. xvi. 22 ; xxvii. 16) ; that 
"the Lord .... formeth the spirit of man within 
him " (Zech. xii. 1) ; and that at death, a Then 
shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the 



The Teaching of the Bible. 



83 



spirit shall return to God who gave it." This 
language is remarkable for the plain, direct, posi 
rive, and undeniable testimony which it bears to 
the distinction that we make between the body and 
the soul, and the fact that, at death, the soul has 
another destination than that of the body. If this 
language can be explained away, or shown to be 
consistent with the doctrine that men have no souls 
more than the brutes, then any language might, in 
like manner, be explained away, and it would be 
impossible to make a declaration of the faith, even 
if one should hold it and wish to declare it. If 
these passages do not teach that there is something 
in man distinct from the body, and sure of a differ- 
ent destination at death, then it would not be pos- 
sible to find language with which to express these 
ideas, whether for the purpose of accepting or re- 
jecting them. 

Another word whose usage in the Old Testa- 
ment deserves to be noticed here, is the word heart, 
(Lebh). It is used to denote an organ of the 
body (Ps. xlv. 5) ; the inner part, or midst of 
anything (Deut. iv. 11 ; Ex. xv. 8 ; compare 
Matt. xii. 40) ; the animal life, or vital principle 
(Ps. cii. 4) ; and the moral seat or centre of the 
feelings, desires, affections, thoughts, purposes, and 
actions, that is, the soul (Deut. iv. 29 ; vi. 5). In 
one passage, the word is used in the first, and 



84 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 



also in the second, of the senses here indicated : 
" Joab took three darts in his hand, and thrust 
them through the heart of Absalom, while he was 
yet alive in the heart of the oak " (2 Sam. xviii. 
14). By one of the prophets the word is used pre- 
cisely as the word B7|>3, (Xepkesh, soul) is some- 
times used, and as he uses it in the same chapter, 
to denote the life. He says, ; * The sword reacheth 
unto the soul ; " and, " It [thy wickedness] reacheth 
unto thine heart " (Jer. iv. 10, 18). But often 
the word is used in a high moral sense, to denote 
the mind or soul. It is used in this moral sense in 
the following passages : K The Lord looketh on the 
heart M (1 Sam. xvL 7) ; God gave Solomon 
.... largeness of heart 93 (1 Kings iv. 29) ; u The 
heart of kings is unsearchable " (Prov. xxv. 3) ; 
K A man's heart deviseth his way " (Prov. xvi. 9) ; 
" The heart knoweth its own bitterness 99 (Prov. xiv. 
10) ; and, u Thine own heart knoweth that thou 
thyself likewise kast cursed others'' (Eccl. vii. 22). 
There can be no question that in all these pas- 
sages, the word heart refers not to our physical, but 
to our intellectual and moral nature ; and therefore 
this word affords a remarkably plain and striking 
instance of the twofold use of language in the 
Bible, of which we have spoken, the same word 
beino; used to denote sometimes that which is lower, 
and sometimes that which is higher, or first the ani- 



Tlie Teaching of the Bible. 85 



mal, and then the spiritual, in man. The testi- 
mony given by this word on this subject is the 
more important, from the fact that the word has 
been but little used in this controversy ; and there- 
fore has not been worn smooth by friction against 
any theory of the soul ; but its bearing, significance, 
and value are as jDlain and manifest as are the im- 
press and value of a golden coin, new and fresh 
from the mint. 

There is still another Hebrew word, that should 
be particularly noticed, on account of its important 
bearing on our subject. It is the word EPfcJ^P 
(E'phaim). Like the more common word 
(Methim), it is usually rendered " the dead ; " once 
it is translated by the word " deceased " (Ps. 
lxxxviii. 10, second clause ; Pro v. ii. 18 ; ix. 18 ; 
xxi. 16 ; Isa. xiv. 9 ; xxvi. 19 ; xxvi. 14). By 
thus using only one and the same English word for 
these two Hebrew words, Dr. Conant says that 
our common version of the Scriptures " confounds 
two words of very different import ; and, what is 
greatly to be regretted, it effaces .... a distinct 
and striking recognition of the separate existence 
of the soul, or spiritual part of man, after the death 
of the body." 1 The distinction between these two 
words is this : the word (Metiiim) means the 

1 Smith's Bible Did. Am. Ed. Art. "Dead." See also 
Smith's Bible Diet. Am. Ed. Art. " Giants." 



86 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul 

dead as distinguished from the living, while the 
word E^MQ^ (H'phaim) means the dead considered 
as departed from this to the world below, the un- 
der-world, as some have proposed to translate the 
Hebrew Vs£* (Sheol). In numerous instances, the 
former word is used in direct antithesis with - H rn 
(Hhayyiru) living, as in the words, " He stood be- 
tween the dead and the living" (Num. xvi. 48) ; 
and, " I praised the dead which are already dead, 
more than the living which are yet alive " (Eccl. 
iv. 2 ; see also 1 Kings iii. 22, 23, and Eccl. ix. 3- 
5) ; while the latter word is never set in antithesis 
with the living, but is used as another expression 
for those ivho are beloiv, as in the declarations, 
" The dead are there .... her guests are in the 
depths of hell " (Prov. ix. 18) ; « They are de- 
ceased, they shall not rise/' and, " The earth shall 
cast out her dead " (Isa. xxvi. 14, 19). In the 
article just referred to, Dr. Conant says, " The dead 
(those who have ceased to live on earth, and are 
therefore absolutely dead to all earthly relations) 
are represented by u\1^, which, as generic, in- 
cludes also the other term ; and the other term 
translated dead, D^SST), means disembodied spirits 
separated from the body at death, and continuing 
to live in a separate existence." He refers to the 
fact that Fiirst derives the word from a root that 
signifies to be obscure or dark, though Gesenius 



The Teaching of the Bible. 87 



regards it as meaning the quiet or the feeble ; but 
he adds that " In either case, it is well represented 
by the word shade/' In De Wette's translation 
of the Bible, the word Schatten (Shades) is uni- 
formly employed as the proper rendering of the 
word ; and the word shade is sometimes used by 
Dr. Noyes. 

Two passages will show plainly enough the dis- 
tinction between these two words used in the He- 
brew Scriptures for the dead, and the importance 
of the distinction. 

" Before Him the shades beneath tremble ; 

The waters, and their inhabitants. 

The under- world is naked before Him, 

And destruction is without covering." (Job xxvi. 5, 6.) 

" The under-world is in commotion on account of Thee, 
To meet Thee at thy coming ; 

It stirreth up before Thee the shades, all the mighty of the 
earth ; 

It arouseth from their thrones all the kings of the nations ; 

They all accost Thee, and say, 

' Art Thou, too, become weak as we ? 

Art Thou become like us i ' " (Isa. xiv. 9, 10.) 1 

Here by the shades, or the dead considered as 
shades, we are to understand the inhabitants of that 
obscure, dim, and shadowy world, which the He- 
brews called Sheol and the Greeks Hades, which 
was regarded as deep and dark ; so deep that the 
expression " deeper than Sheol " (Job xi. 8) was 
1 Dr. Noves' Translation. 



88 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

used to describe that which is profoundest ; so dark 
that it was called " the land of darkness and the 
shadow of death, a land of darkness, as darkness 
itself, .... without any order, and where the 
light is as darkness ; 99 and whose inhabitants are 
represented by Job as trembling before the awful 
najesty of God, by Isaiah as in commotion on ac- 
count of the coming of the king of Babylon, whose 
stupendous fall he foretells, and by Ezekiel as cry- 
ing out from the midst of its pit to Egypt and his 
helpers when they come. 1 From this it appears 
that the word Sheol, which sometimes means simply 
the grave (as in Ps. xlix. 14, "Like sheep they are 
laid in the grave,") sometimes means the abode of 
departed spirits, for " the dead," " the shades are 
there, in the depths of the under-world " 2 (Prov. ix. 
18), and they are represented as conscious, intelli- 
gent, and active. 

In the New Testament there is the same use of 

1 " Thus saith the Lord, Jehovah : 
In the day when he went down to the grave (Sheol) 
I caused the deep to mourn. . . . 
At the sound of his fall I made the nations to shake, 
When I cast him down to the grave (Sheol), 
To them that have gone down to the pit ; ... . 
The mightiest heroes from the pit (Sheol) shall speak to 

him and his helpers. . . . 
There is Assyria and all her company." (Ez. xxxi. 15, 16 ; 
xxxiii. 21, 22. Dr. Noyes' Translation.) 

2 Dr. Conant's Translation. 



The Teaching of the Bible. 89 

language as in the Old; and the words soul and 
spirit, life and death are used sometimes in a lower, 
and sometimes in a higher sense ; but they are so 
used, and such other representations and declara- 
tions are made, that the great facts of man's higher 
life and future destinv are brought out with more 
distinctness and prominence, as the progressive 
character of the divine revelations would lead us to 
expect. 

Two different words are used in the New Testa- 
ment to denote the soul or spirit, both significant 
and instructive. 

Of these two words, one is the word ^ v XVi which, 
in meaning and usage, corresponds very nearly to 
the Hebrew 12753, (Xephesh.) and the Latin anima. 
It is used to denote a living creature, or being, as 
in Rev. xvi. 3 : u Every living creature that was in 
the sea died ; " a person, as in Eom. xiii. 1 : i; Let 
every soul be subject unto the higher powers ; " 
the life, or vital principle, as in Matt. ii. 21 : 
" They are dead that sought the young child's life," 
and Matt. vi. 25: " The life is more than meat;" 
the soul, considered as the sentient principle, that is, 
the seat of the senses, desires, appetites, passions, and 
affections, that which may be regarded as common 
both to man and brutes, and at once their higher 
and our lower nature, that which in the philosophy 
of Pythagoras and Plato was distinguished from 



90 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

the higher mind or reason, which belongs to man 
alone, in which peculiar sense the word is used in 
those passages which speak of " the whole spirit, 
and soul, and body " (1 Thess. v. 23), and of " the 
dividing, asunder of soul and spirit" (Heb. iv. 
12) ; and also the soul, in its highest sense, as the 
spiritual and immortal part of man, that which 
does not die with the body, but survives it, as in 
Matt. x. 28 : " Fear not them which kill the body 
but are not able to kill the soul ; " and Rev. vi. 9 : 
" I saw under the altar the souls of them that 
were slain for the word of God, and for the 
testimony which they held." These two passages 
are specially important as showing how the sold, in 
the highest sense of that word, is to be distinguished 
from the body, and regarded as capable of surviving 
it. In the former passage, the expression body 
and soul is used to describe the whole man, and 
this is exactly equivalent to what is elsewhere called 
the " body, soul, and spirit ; " and in both passages, 
the representation is express and positive, that the 
soul is not killed by those who kill the body ; nay, in 
the last passage, it is expressly declared that, at some 
time previous to the resurrection, the souls of those 
who had been slain were seen and heard crying for 
vengeance on their murderers who were still living 
on the earth. 

The other word to which we refer is -vevfxa, 



The Teaching of the Bible. 91 

which is the common word for spirit. Like the 
Hebrew word H^T (Ru a hh), and the Latin spiritus, 
it is used to denote the wind, or air in motion ; the 
human spirit, mind, or soul ; disembodied or unem- 
bodied spirits ; and God Himself and the Holy 
Spirit. In John iii. 8, " The wind bloweth where 
it listeth," the word is used in precisely the same 
manner as the word iVH (Ru a hh) is used in Eccl. 
xi. 5, " As thou knowest not the way of the wind ; " 
the term being used in both instances as a symbol 
of that which is invisible and inscrutable, like the 
work of the divine Spirit in the creation of the 
world, and in the new creation of the soul when it 
is " born again," or " born of the Spirit." In 1 
Cor. ii. 11, " What man knoweth the things of a 
man, save the spirit of man, which is in him ? " the 
word is plainly used to denote the self-conscious 
and cognitive power of the human mind ; and in 
ch. v. ver. 5 of the same epistle, the word is used in 
striking contrast with u the flesh," such contrast that 
it is represented as possible for " the spirit " to be 
saved while " the flesh " is destroyed. The word 
is also used when mention is made of " the spirits 
in prison 99 (1 Pet. iii. 19), and " the spirits of just 
men made perfect " (Heb. xii. 23) ; and when it is 
said that " God is a spirit" (John iv. 24), and " the 
father of spirits " (Heb. xii. 9), so called in direct 
contrast with the " fathers of our flesh," spoken of 



92 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

in the same verse ; that the angels are " minister- 
ing spirits " (Heb. i. 14) ; and that "A spirit hath 
not flesh and bones" (Luke xxiv. 39). It would 
hardly be possible to express the idea of spiritual 
existences, if it is not expressed in these passages. 

The word i/a^ is the word commonly used by 
the Greek classical writers to denote the soul, 
whether spoken of as preexistent, or distinguished 
from the body, or immortal ; and whether its im- 
mortality is a subject of inquiry, doubt, denial, or 
affirmation. It is the word used by Homer when 
he speaks of " the souls of mighty heroes sent be- 
fore their time to Hades " (II. i. 4, 5) ; when he 
describes their going, as of Patroclus, thrice 
wounded, fallen and expiring, he says that " His 
soul went flying from his Kinbs to Hades, lament- 
ing its lot" (xvi. 855, 856) ; and when he de- 
scribes their condition in the disembodied state, 
as when Ulysses saw and conversed with the souls 
of his mother Antikleia and the prophet Teiresias 
there (Od. xi. 84, et seq.). It is the word used 
by Herodotus, when he says of the Egyptians, 
" They were the first to broach the opinion that 
the soul of man is immortal " (Bk. ii. 123). It 
is the word used by Xenophon, when he reports 
the dying Cyrus as saying to his children and 
friends, " I can never be persuaded that the soul 
lives no longer than it dwells in this mortal body, 



The Teaching of the Bible. 93 

and that it dies on its separation ; for I see that 
the soul communicates vigor and motion to mortal 
bodies during its continuance in them : neither 
can I be persuaded that the soul is divested of in- 
telligence, on its separation from this gross and 
senseless body ; but it is probable that when the 
soul is separated, it becomes pure and entire, and 
then is more intelligent " (Cyr. viii. 7) ; and he 
employs the same word when he represents Soc- 
rates as saying, " It was not sufficient for God 
merely to care for the body, but, what is of most 
consequence, he implanted in man the soul su- 
preme ; " and, " "When the soul, in which alone is 
intelligence, has gone forth, men carry forth and 
bury the body of the nearest and dearest person, 
as soon as possible " (Mem. i. 2, 53). This also 
is the word used by Plato, when he says, " Every 
soul may be said to wear out many bodies, espe- 
cially in the course of a long life " (Phsed. 87) ; 
" Death is the separation of the soul and the body 
from each other" (Gorg. 524, B.) ; and, "Beyond 
question, the soul is immortal and imperishable, 
and our souls will truly exist in another world " 
(Phsed. 106, E.). Plutarch also uses the same 
word when he says that " Homer regarded the soul 
and nothing else as the man " (De Vit. Horn.), that 
" Each one of us consists of the soul and the 
body ; " and that " The soul is older than the body " 



94 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

(Plat. Quest.). Such is the familiar use, and the 
acknowledged signification of this word among the 

Co o 

classical writers of ancient Greece ; and the writ- 
ers of the New Testament used the same word 
when they said, " My soul doth magnify the Lord, 
and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour " 
(Luke i. 46) ; and, " I wish above all things that 
thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy 
soul prospereth " ( 3 John 2) ; and when they 
spoke of Christ as " the Shepherd and Bishop of 
souls " (1 Pet. ii. 25) ; of the " ingrafted word 
which is able to save your souls" (James i. 21) ; of 
the " salvation of your souls " (1 Pet. i. 9) ; of 
hope as the "anchor of the soul" (Heb. vi. 19) ; 
of " believing to the salvation of the soul 99 (Heb. 
x. 39) ; of " watching for your souls " (Heb. xiii. 
17) ; of " confirming the souls of the disciples " 
(Acts xiv. 22) ; of " committing the keeping of their 
souls unto God in well-dcing, as unto a faithful 
Creator" (1 Pet. iv. 19); and of "'fearing not 
them which kill the body, but are not able to kill 
the soul" (Matt. x. 28) ; and if this use of this 
word does not indicate the presence in man of 
something distinct from the body and capable of 
surviving it, then, by the use of what word could 
the fact have been indicated, even supposing it to 
be a fact, or supposing that Christ and his Apos- 
tles had wished to refer to it as a fact, or as a 
question to be settled, or as an untruth ? 



The Teaching of the Bible. 95 

Turning now to another class of terms and pas- 
sages of Scripture, the Apostle Paul, in 2 Cor. iv. 
16, speaks of an outer and inner man, as if a man 
were made of two men, mysteriously interlaced 
and bound together ; the one decaying and the 
other undecaying ; one mortal and the other im- 
mortal ; one subject to death and the other inde- 
pendent of death. He says, " Though our outward 
man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day 
by day." Here the distinction is not that which 
is made elsewhere between the old man and the 
new, which refers to the moral change of regener- 
ation or renovation ; nor to the distinction that is 
elsewhere made between the law of the members 
and the law of the mind, which refers to the con- 
flict between passion and principle ; or between 
the sensuous and the moral in human nature : but 
it is the distinction between the material and the 
spiritual ; the decaying and the undecaying ; the 
mortal and the immortal in human nature, it being 
taken for granted that there is something in man 
besides the body, something that is independent of 
its decay. 

The words life and death deserve special notice 
because they are so often used in a higher as well 
as in a lower sense, and because they are so used 
as to involve and teach the whole substance of this 
Christian doctrine of the soul, concerning which 



96 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 



we are inquiring. By the aimihilationists these 
terms are understood to refer solely to the body, 
and its phenomena ; the word life signifying sim- 
ply existence, and death denoting a person's fall 
out of existence into k ' ; blank nothingness," or, to 
use the expression of a certain advocate of that 
heresy, " extinction of being, soul, and body." If 
there is anything in respect to which they appear 
to be agreed and confident, it is this, that these 
terms are always to be understood literally, that 
life means existence, and death ceasing to exist, 
so that it is absurd to speak of the dead as still in 
existence. But the use of these terms in the 
Bible absolutely forbids this system of interpreta- 
tion and this doctrine, for they are used scores of 
times not in a literal but in a figurative, not in a 
physical but in a moral, sense. In the declaration 
of God to Adam. " In the day that thou eatest 
thereof thou shalt surely die" (Gen. ii. 17), if 
death means simply the death of the body, then 
the declaration was not fulfilled, for he lived many 
years, and begat sons and daughters, after his trans- 
gression. "When Solomon says, " In the way of 
righteousness is life ; and in the pathway thereof 
there is no death " (Pro v. xii. 28), it is manifest 
and undeniable that the terms u life " and " death " 
are used metaphorically to denote moral well-being 
and moral ruin. When Christ said, u If thou wilt 



The Teaching of the Bible. 



97 



enter into life, keep the commandments " (Matt, 
xix. 1 7) ; and. u Ye will not come to me, that ye 
might have life " (John v. 40), He must have 
meant by the word life, something more than mere 
exi-tence, for those to whom he spoke were 
already in existence. "When he said, If a man 
keep my sayings he shall never see death " (John 
viii. 51), and, " Whosoever liveth and believeth 
in me. shall never die " (John xi. 26), He must 
have meant by the word death something more 
than the death of the body, for in this sense all 
must die, whether they believe in Christ and keep 
his sayings or not. And when He says, " A man's 
life consisted! not in the abundance of the things 
which he possesseth" (Luke xii. 15), He shows 
unquestionably that it does consist in something 
more than mere existence. The words of St. 
Paul. - To be carnally minded is death : but to be 
spiritually minded is life and peace " (Rom. viii. 
6), are a plain and unmistakable statement from 
his own pen, of the sense in which he ordinarily 
employs these words " life " and " death " to denote, 
not physical, but moral realities, the wretched es- 
tate of the carnal mind, depraved and condemned, 
on the one hand, and the blessed estate of the 
spiritual mind, renewed and justified, on the other. 
And these passages, K He that heareth my word, 
and believeth on Him that sent me, hath everlasting 



98 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

life, and shall not come into condemnation ; but is 
passed from death unto life " (John v. 24) ; " We 
know that we have passed from death unto life, 
because we love the brethren" (1 John iii. 14) ; 
" My son was dead, and is alive again " (Luke xv. 
24) ; " She that liveth in pleasure, is dead while 
she liveth " (1 Tim. v. 6) ; "I know thy works, 
that thou hast a name that thou livest, and art 
dead " (Rev. iii. 1) ; " Let the dead bury their 
dead " (Matt. viii. 22) ; " You hath He quickened, 
who were dead in trespasses and sins " (Eph. ii. 1) ; 
and " This is life eternal, that they might know 
Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom 
Thou hast sent" (John xvii. 3) ; can by no possi- 
ble ingenuity be reconciled with the " literal " 
theory of interpretation, and with the doctrine of 
the annihilationists, that man has no soul, in the 
sense in which we understand that word ; that 
death pertains to the body alone, and seizes upon 
and destroys the whole man, when it does its work 
upon the body ; and that man can have no eternal 
life, except in prospect, until after the resurrection : 
for these passages teach positively that death and 
life are moral states of the soul, from one of which 
men may pass, and have passed, into the other, as 
from darkness into light, in this world ; the dead- 
ness spoken of is affirmed of living persons ; and life, 
everlasting life, is represented, not as something 



The Teaching of the Bible. 99 



promised in the future, but as a possession in the 
present, something that the believer already " hath/' 
or " hath passed " into, just as St. Paul declares 
that God " hath made us meet to be partakers of 
the inheritance of the saints in light," and " hath 
delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath 
translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son." 
This use of these words life and death ought not 
to be regarded as at all singular, for the same use 
of the words is found in other literature outside of 
the Bible, and it corresponds exactly with the facts 
of human experience, as they may be divided into 
the two classes of the lower and the higher, the 
material and the spiritual. There is a lower life 
of the body ; and there is a higher life of the soul. 
The life of the body is sustained by " daily bread ; " 
but, in respect to the soul, man liveth not by bread 
alone, but by the bread of heaven, the word and 
truth of God. There is also a death of the body ; 
and there is another death of the soul, moral death, 
estrangement from God, spiritual insensibility, 
alienation, unrest, disquiet, foreboding of evil, self- 
reproach, self-condemnation, remorse, despair. Thus 
" Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death." 
This moral death is the wages of sin, its fruit of 
evil. And, in perfect accordance with these facts, 
and with this corresponding use of language in the 
Bible, a modern poet says, — 



100 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 



11 'Tis not the whole of life to live, 
Nor all of death to die ; " 

another says, — 

" When faith departs, when honor dies, 
The man is dead ; 

and yet another says, — 

" Thou wilt find, by hearty striving only, 
And truly loving, thou canst truly live." 

When Christ said to his disciples, " Fear not 
them which kill the body, but are not able to kill 
the soul " (Matt. x. 28), he meant, if his language 
has any intelligible meaning, that the soul is capa- 
ble of an existence distinct and separate from the 
body ; that the killing of the body does not involve 
the killing of the soul, that instead of dying with 
the body it survives it, — death and the utmost of 
human violence having no power over it. This, as 
we have already seen, is the plain and manifest 
meaning of the passage, and it is a meaning which 
no objections, cavils, or sophistical reasonings about 
the terms employed, or the resurrection, have been 
able to eliminate or set aside. 

On a certain occasion Christ held a conversation 
with some of the Sadducees, concerning the resur- 
rection and the world to come, an account of which 
has been given by three several evangelists (Matt, 
xxii. 23-33 ; Mark xii. 18-27 ; Luke xx. 27-40). 
The Sadducees, we are to understand, held that 



The Teaching of the Bible. 101 

" There is no resurrection, neither angel nor spirit " 
(Acts xxiii. 8), though the Pharisees believed in 
the resurrection of the dead, and in the existence of 
angels and departed spirits. Josephus says that 
w The doctrine of the Sadducees is this, that souls 
die with the bodies" (Ant. xviii. 1, 4), and, " They 
take away the belief of the immortal duration of 
the soul, and the punishments and rewards of 
Hades" (Bell. Jud. ii. 3, 14). These ancient 
materialists or annihilationists had come to Jesus 
with a question concerning the resurrection which 
they thought would prove exceedingly embarrassing 
to Him ; but in reply He said, " Ye do err, not 
knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God. 
For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are 
given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in 
heaven. But as touching the resurrection of the 
dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto 
you by God, saying, ' I am the God of Abraham, 
and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob ' ? 
God is not the God of the dead, but of the living." 
So instead of being embarrassed by the question of 
the Sadducees, Christ simply declared that it was a 
question that was not fit to be asked, because it 
showed an ignorance both of what God had taught, 
and of what He is able to do, in the resurrection 
and the world to come, when men will be raised to 
an estate superior to our present earthly relation- 



102 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 



ship and wants, and there will be no place for the 
relation to which the question referred, because 
then men will be like the angels of God in heaven. 
Moreover, the souls of the departed are now exist- 
ing in the other world, though absent from their 
bodies, and this fact ought to teach any one that 
such questions as that of the Sadducees should 
never be asked, for that is a spiritual world, and 
not, like the heaven of the Mohammedans, a world 
of the senses, or of sensuous delight. That decla- 
ration which God made so long after the patriarchs 
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had died, and their 
bodies had returned to dust in the cave of Machpelah 
at Hebron, the declaration that He was their God, 
thouD'h He is not the God of the dead but of the 
living, proves that they must still be living as to 
their souls, in the other world. This is manifestly 
the import of what Christ said, and, if there were 
any doubt as to the correctness of this view, it 
would be removed by the important words recorded 
by Luke, the words. ;i For all live unto Him ; M this 
fact that "' All live unto Him M being the reason for 
the declaration that God is the God of Abraham, 
Isaac, and Jacob, when He is not the God of the 
dead but of the living. TVhen considered in its 
connection with the well-known and peculiar doc- 
trine of the Sadducees, that men's souls die with 
their bodies, this passage appears to be a remark- 



The Teaching of the Bible. 103 

ably direct, emphatic, and undeniable declaration of 
the truth that the soul dies not with the body but 
survives its dissolution. 

To the dying thief upon the cross, Jesus said, 
" Verily I say unto thee, To-day shalt thou be with 
me in Paradise" (Luke xxiii. 43). 

This passage is so plain and positive a declaration 
of the continued existence of the soul after death, 
that the annihilationists themselves have confessed 
the difficulty of reconciling it with their views ; 
they have said that if this, and one or two other 
passages, can be explained in harmony with their 
views, then no others will present any serious diffi- 
culties ; and they have made special efforts to break 
its force, or to show that it does not mean what it 
has commonly been understood to mean. 

Some have said that this case of the penitent 
thief was a " very peculiar case," one that should 
" be regarded as one of the miraculous and extraor- 
dinary circumstances of that awful period " of the 
crucifixion, and therefore a case that " can hardly 
be regarded as decisive as to what shall be the lot 
of other men." But nothing in the narrative indi- 
cates or intimates these peculiar or miraculous 
features of the penitent thiefs repentance, faith, 
hope, or reward ; not a word is there to intimate 
that his experience was not merely on a higher 
plane than that of ordinary experience, but in 



104 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

another and altogether different sphere, so that it 
cannot be said that " These things hajypened . . . . 
for ensarnples, and were written for our admonition," 
that we might be encouraged to repent, believe, and 
hope through Christ. This supposition that Christ 
gave to the penitent thief a destiny totally different 
from that of other believers, is a pure assumption, 
supported by not one particle of proof, and made 
only for the purpose of evading the force of this 
direct and positive testimony to the truth that at 
death the righteous do not pass into a state of 
unconsciousness or no thin guess, but depart " to be 
with Christ, which is far better." 

By others it has been said that the thief did not 
die that day on which the words under considera- 
tion were spoken, or at least it is not certain that 
he did, and therefore they must have had some 
other meaning than that his departed spirit should 
be with Christ in the other world that day. " How 
do you know that he died that day ? " and " Does 
the Bible say so ? " are questions that we have 
heard asked with an amazing show of confidence, as 
if they had power to paralyze all believers, or strike 
them dumb if they should attempt to answer. But 
in answer we should say. How do we know that he 
ever died ? Does the Bible say so ? And can we 
believe it of him without an express Thus-saith-the- 
Lord, for his special case? If we can, then why 



The Teaching of the Bible. 



105 



should any one interpose a cavil that is only 
worthy of Paine's " Age of Reason/' between the 
promise that Christ made to his suppliant, and 
its fulfillment? If any considerations are needed 
to show that this is but a cavil, the following would 
seem to be sufficient. By one of the evangelists 
we are told that the soldiers broke the legs of both 
the malefactors that were crucified with Jesus, and 
that this was done in order that the bodies should 
not remain upon the cross on the Sabbath clay 
(John xix. 31, 32). Josephus says that " The Jews 
used to take so much care of the burial of men, 
that they took down those that were condemned 
and crucified, and buried them before the going 
down of the sun " (Bell. Jud. iv. 5, 2) ; and in the 
law of Moses it is written, " If a man have com- 
mitted a sin worthy of death, and he be to be put 
to death, and thou hang him on a tree ; his body 
shall not remain all night upon the tree, but thou 
shalt in any wise bury him that day, for he that is 
hanged is accursed of God" (Deut. xxi. 22, 23), 
to which language St. Paul makes particular refer- 
ence to show that Christ was made w a curse for 
us," in that He was crucified, or hanged on a tree. 

By some others it has been said that by Para- 
dise we are to understand a locality on the " new 
earth." which does not yet exist, and therefore 
Christ could not have meant by it any place in 



106 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

which He was to be on the day of his crucifixion. 
But it is enough for us that Christ spoke of it as 
already existing, and a place in which He, with the 
penitent expiring by his side, would be that day ; 
and that St. Paul said that either " in the body, or 
out of the body/' he had been " caught up into 
Paradise."' which could not have been true if there 
had been no such place existing. 

Others, however, admit the existence of Para- 
dise, and its identity with heaven, but say that 
Christ could not have been there during the period 
between his death and resurrection, because after 
his resurrection He said to Mary Magdalene, " I 
am not yet ascended to my Father." But in these 
words Christ evidently had reference to his ascen- 
sion in the body, as after forty days he went up 
from Olivet, and a cloud received and veiled Him 
from the sight of mortals ; and in this sense it was 
true that He had not yet ascended to the Father, 
though immediately after He gave up the ghost 
upon the cross, He was in Paradise in the spirit, 
which at death He committed to the Father, saying, 
" Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit " 
(Luke xxiii. 46). 

Others still have said that when Christ died, He 
went into a state of utter unconsciousness and non- 
existence, " a state of death," as they have called 
it ; and therefore He could not have been with the 



The Teaching of the Bible. 107 

penitent malefactor in Paradise when they were 
both dead. We have heard it said that •• TThen 
Christ went into the grave He went there as a 
unit : — the whole of Him went there : — He did 
not go two ways at death : — and between his 
death and resurrection there was nothing of Him 
but his dead body ! " This is assuming the very 
point to be proved ; and making a monstrous 
application of the assumed principle, for which we 
were wholly unprepared. For we had supposed 
that those who were entangled in this gross heresy 
would hesitate and refuse to apply their doctrine to 
Him whose preexistence is taught in the Scrip- 
tures as plainly as his miraculous birth ; whose 
divinity is as manifest as his humanity : whose 
advem. words, works, death, resurrection, and as- 
cension show that He was a supernatural being, 
and that, therefore, supernatural works were per- 
fectly natural to Him. who in the beginning was 
the Word, was with God. and was God : " in whom 
was life, and by whom •• all things were created : " 
who said. " Before Abraham was. I am: " who said, 
u I came forth from the Father, and am come into 
the world ; " again. u I leave the world, and go to 
the Father ; " who said. " I lay down my life that 
I may take it again : — no man taketh it from me, 
but I lay it down of myself; — I have power to 
lay it down and I have power to take it again : " 



108 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

and who, without any appearance of assuming 
what did not belong to Him, claimed a relation, 
and a oneness with the Father, such as no mere 
man, not even the wisest and the best, ever claimed, 
or ever could claim, without audacity or io sanity ; 
and whose relationship to God, and power of self- 
resurrection thus claimed, prove that his whole 
being did not pass under or into the power of 
death when He expired on the cross, but in the 
conflict not He, but death, was vanquished, because 
the prey was too mighty for the power of death. 
Whatever some may think, it would seem that all 
whose minds are not utterly blinded, materialized, 
and deadened to spiritual conceptions and the 
divine majesty and might of Christ, must see that 
He at least did not become entirely the prey of 
death ; that his words, " Father, into thy hands I 
commend my spirit," were not idle and empty 
words, idle and empty as the wind ; and that the 
very thought or suggestion that his whole being 
was held for three days in the power of death and 
the grave, is monstrous and shocking. 

It has also been proposed to understand by this 
term "to-day," that day in which Christ should 
come in his kingdom ; as if the malefactor had 
said, " Lord, remember me in the day of thy com- 
ing," and Christ had replied, " Verily I say unto 
thee, this day that thou hast spoken of, the day of 



The Teaching of the Bible, 109 

my coining, thou shalt be with me in Paradise." 
But this is something very different from what 
they said ; and we cannot repress the inquiry, If 
this is what they meant, why did they not say it ? 
Would any one, on hearing their words for the 
first time, ever imagine that this was their mean- 
ing ? We have known of men's putting a meaning 
into a passage of Scripture, and then professing to 
find it there and to draw it out ; but this is the 
most remarkable instance of the practice that wp 
ever met with. But this is not explaining Scrip- 
ture, in any proper sense of the words, — it is 
rather practicing jugglery on it ; and if such 
changes and substitutions can be made in the 
Scriptures in the name of exegesis, then no one 
can be sure that he understands them correctly in 
any part, for every passage is at the mercy of every 
operator who may wish to try his art upon it, and 
practice his imposition upon us. 

Again, it has been proposed by some to under- 
stand that the prayer of the malefactor, " Lord, 
remember me when thou comest into thy king- 
dom," was addressed to Christ in bitter mockery; 
and that in reply Christ said to him. Shalt thou 
be with me in Paradise?" this question being a 
solemn declaration that it could not possibly be. 
And this piece of jugglery has been practiced upon 
the words, and this mocking spirit has been 



110 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

attributed to the malefactor, in full view of the 
fact that he had just rebuked the other malefactor 
that was crucified with him, for reviling Christ, and 
said to him, " Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou 
art in the same condemnation? And we indeed 
justly ; for we receive the due reward of our deeds : 
but this man hath done nothing amiss " (Luke 
xxiii. 39-41). Is this the language of a mocker ? 

Still further, it has been said that the word 
crrjfjLepov, which, in the passage under consideration, 
is translated " to-day," is to be understood as de- 
noting not definite, but indefinite time, as the word 
" now " is often used without any definite reference 
to time. One writer says that the word " does 
qualify the first expression, c I say,' and is the same 
in other instances translated now, which is fre- 
quently used without the least regard to definite 
time. As if I should say to my opponent, Now you 
are mistaken with regard to what the Saviour said 
to the thief. Here I do not use the word now to 
let my opponent understand he was not mistaken 
yesterday, to-clay, or to-morrow, but to give a force 
to that indicative form of expression. This appears 
to be the use of the word semeron in the text : 
6 Now, verily, I say unto thee shalt thou be with 
me in Paradise.' " This is, to say the least, a 
very remarkable statement. It is remarkable for 
the author's quiet and adroit sleight of hand move- 



The Teaching of the Bille. Ill 



ment, by which the word " now " is substituted for 
the word "to-day," and also removed from its 
proper place, and put at the beginning of the 
sentence. Also, it is remarkable for the declara- 
tion that the word translated " to-day/' " is the 
same in other instances translated noiv, which is 
frequently used without the least regard to definite 
time ; " when an examination of the several pas- 
sages in which the word is used in the New 
Testament would show any one that it is never 
translated by the word "now," but in eighteen 
instances it is rendered " to-day," and in twenty- 
three instances it is rendered " this day ; " and it 
has the utmost regard to definite time ; as is man- 
ifest in the sayings : " It will be foul weather 
to-day " (Matt. xvi. 3) ; " Son, go work to-day in 
my vineyard " (Matt. xxi. 28) ; "I must walk 
to-day and to-morrow, and the day following " 
(Luke xiii. 33) ; and, " This clay is salvation come 
to this house " (Luke xix. 9). The word cr^fxepov 
in Greek, like the word " to-day " in English, has 
as plain, definite, and unquestionable a meaning 
as any word can have ; and it can no more mean 
another day than to-day, than yesterday can mean 
another day than yesterday, or to-morrow than 
to-morrow. 

But once more, it has been said and insisted 
upon with exceeding pertinacity by many, as if this 



112 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

were the very key to their position, that a serious 
mistake has been made in the punctuation of this 
passage, and the comma ought to be placed not 
before, but after, the word 66 to-day," so that it shall 
modify not the following, but the preceding clause, 
and Christ's declaration to the malefactor shall 
appear to have been, " Verily I say unto thee 
to-day, thou shalt be with me in Paradise ; " that 
is, I make the statement to-day, that thou shalt be 
with me in Paradise sometime. 

Our first thought in view of this representation 
of the case is, that it is utterly unworthy of the 
subject ; that it is too idle, puerile, and absurd a 
view of Christ's words, to be seriously entertained 
by any ; for if Christ said anything on the cross or 
elsewhere, He must of course have said it on the 
day of its utterance, and it was needless to inform 
the malefactor of this fact, for if he was capable 
of knowing anything, he must have known it with- 
out being told of it. 

An attempt, however, has been made to justify 
this view, on the ground that Christ wished to call 
special attention to that day, because it seemed 
" so unlikely " that the promise would ever be 
fulfilled. One writer has presented his idea of 
what Christ said in the following paraphrastic 
form : " Yes, says the suffering Saviour, in the 
hearing of the mocking multitude, I say unto thee 



The Teaching of the Bible. 113 



to~day, to-day in this hour of my darkness and 
agony ; to-day, when the cross is apparently giving 
the lie to all my pretensions ; to-day, a day of 
forlorn prospects and withered hopes so far as 
human eye can see, verily to-day I say unto thee, 
thou shalt be with me in Paradise, when my king- 
dom shall be established in triumph and glory." 
But this language is very different from that of 
Christ. In style and in thought both, it is alto- 
gether different from that which He employed on 
the cross, and on other occasions. The contrast 
indeed is wonderful. He spoke not with cunning 
art, like the rhetorician or the sophist, to dazzle 
and confound his hearers, but with the utmost 
plainness and simplicity, from the heart to the 
heart ; his speech was not with extravagance and 
violence, like that of fanatics, but with calmness 
and self-possession, He being conscious of the eternal 
truth He uttered, and his words needing no help 
beyond that which they received from his own 
presence, bearing, and character, his teaching being 
thus u with authority," and such that " the common 
people heard Him gladly," and the officers of the 
Sanhedrim said, 4i Never man spake like this man." 
The apologetic style of speaking He never used. 
He made his most astonishing declarations of 
earthly and of heavenly things, without the least 
attempt to excuse the boldness of the declara- 
8 



114 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

tions, or to apologize for their apparent incon- 
sistency with his position in the world, or their 
seeming incredibility. To his disciples He said, 
"Verily I say unto yon, that ye which have fol- 
lowed me, in the regeneration, when the Son of 
man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also 
shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve 
tribes of Israel" (Matt. xix. 28). To the chief 
priests, scribes, and rulers of the Jews He said, 
" Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on 
the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of 
heaven " (Matt. xxvi. 64). And to Pilate He said, 
" I am a king ; to this end was I born, and for 
this cause came I into the world, that I should 
bear witness unto the truth : every one that is of 
the truth heareth my voice " (John xviii. 37). 
But in none of these, or in other instances, did He 
utter one word of apology for the boldness of his 
declarations, or the seeming incongruity between 
his lofty words and his lowly circumstances, nor 
did He ever say or intimate that however strange 
or unlikely it might seem, his words would be fully 
verified. Why then should this idea, so utterly 
foreign to the mind and manner of Jesus, be imag- 
ined to have entered largely, or at all, into his 
promise to the dying malefactor ? 

Several things, however, may properly be said 
here of the alleged error in the punctuation of this 



The Teaching of the Bible. 115 

passage, and the relation of the word u to-day " to 
the other parts of the sentence. 

First, granting that " the punctuation is not the 
work of inspiration," but of later date than the 
gospels themselves, no one has the right, or should 
take the liberty, to place the marks of punctuation 
wherever he may choose, without regard to the 
sense ; for the language of the Bible, and of other 
books, meant something before our modern system 
of punctuation was invented ; and the marks of 
punctuation should be so placed as to indicate, in- 
stead of obscuring or spoiling, the sense which the 
words of the ancient author were arranged in a 
certain order to convey. 

Secondly, as simple matter of fact, it is not the 
punctuation that has led to our interpretation of 
this passage, but the obvious sense of the passage 
led to the punctuation of it, that is, led to the 
placing of the comma before the word " to-day," 
because when thus placed, it indicates the same re- 
lation of that word to the rest of the sentence as is 
indicated by the collocation of the words in the 
original Greek. 

Thirdly, in the Greek language the arrangement 
of words in sentences is such, that the idea which in 
the mind of the speaker or writer is regarded as most 
important, is spoken or written first, and since, as all 
allow, the word " to-day 99 is the most important 



116 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

or emphatic word in this sentence, its position shows 
that it belongs to and modifies the following instead 
of the preceding clause ; and if it had been meant 
to modify the preceding clause, " I say unto thee," 
it would, like the word " verily," have stood before 
it, as, in quoting the passage, those who take this 
view of it often transfer the word " to-day" to 
that place, and make it say, " Verily, to-day I say 
unto thee, thou shalt be with me in Paradise." 

Many passages might be given to illustrate this 
usage of the Greek language ; but the three follow- 
ing must suffice : " Son, go work to-day in my 
vineyard 99 (Tckvov, v-traye, crrjfxepov ipyd^ov iv rG 
a/A7T€Awi/6 /xov. Matt. xxi. 28) ; " Zaccheus, make 
haste and come down ; for to-day I must abide at 
thy house " (Za/c^aTe, cnrevcras KarafiyjOc onqjxepov 
yap iv tw olkuj crov Set /xe /xcifcu. Luke xix. 5) ; 
" Go to now, ye that say, To-day or to-morrow we 
will go into such a city " ("Aye vvv ol Xeyovres, 
^rjfiepov kcu avpiov 7ropev(jo)fxe6a €ts rrjvSe rrjv ttoXlv. 
James iv. 13). In these passages the word " to-day " 
is used in precisely the same manner as in the 
words spoken by Christ to the malefactor on the 
cross ; the collocation of words is the same ; and 
there is the same reason why any one should insist 
that the word " to-day " should be connected with 
the preceding instead of the following clause 
(because, forsooth, the punctuation is not the work 



The Teaching of the Bible. 117 

of inspiration) in these passages as in that. The 
reference sometimes made to Zech. ix. 12 : " Turn 
you to the strong hold, ye jDrisoners of hope : even to- 
day do I declare that I will render double unto thee." 
as if this were a parallel passage, and one whose 
use of the word " to-day " justifies our critics in 
connecting that word with the first clause of Christ's 
declaration in Luke xxiii. 43, is nothing to the pur- 
pose, for three reasons : first, because that passage 
is found in the Hebrew of the Old Testament, and 
Dot in the Greek of the New, and therefore de- 
termines nothing with regard to the collocation of 
words in the Greek language ; secondly, because in 
ehe Greek version of the Old Testament, called the 
Septuagint, it is not the word o-^/xepov that is used 
for " to-day," but another expression, Svn tuas 17/xepas • 
and thirdly, granting that this expression is equiva- 
(ent to the word used for to-day by Luke, it stands 
before instead of after the clause which it modifies, 
or to which it belongs, and therefore goes to show, 
if it has any bearing on the subject, that it belongs 
to the clause which follows it instead of the one that 
precedes it. Therefore, considered in every point 
of view, the attempt to connect the word " to-day " 
in Luke xxiii. 43, with the words that precede in- 
stead of those which follow it, fails, and fails sig- 
nally ; and is found to deserve the reproach put 
upon it by Landis, who says, " Not one instance 



118 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

can be found in the inspired Scriptures of any such 
usage of the word o-rj/jiepov as these men so arbi- 
trarily and ignorantly attempt to fix upon it in this 
instance ; " of Bellarmine, who says, " This expo- 
sition is perfectly ridiculous ; " of Grotius, who 
says, " They have acted most basely who have 
joined the word with Xiyu) (I say) ; " and of Alford, 
who says, " It is surely something worse than silly." 

But some may still wish to inquire what is prop- 
erly meant by Paradise. What should we under- 
stand by this word as it was used by Christ in his 
promise to the penitent on the cross ? Does it mean 
heaven ? Or should we understand by it some 
other place or state, " a separate state," as it is 
often called, where the Roman Catholics and some 
Protestants hold that disembodied spirits, removed 
from earth, but far from heaven, await the resur- 
rection of their bodies on the last day ? To these 
inquiries we answer that, in our judgment, by the 
word Paradise, Christ meant heaven; though if it 
could be shown the word denotes " a separate 
state," its value as a proof of the continued ex- 
istence of the soul would be the same. 

The word Paradise is used in the New Testa- 
ment three times ; in the passage under considera- 
tion, in 2 Cor. xii. 4, and in Rev. ii. 7. To the 
Corinthians Paul spoke of having been caught up, 
— whether in the body or out of the body he could 



The Teaching of the Bible. 



119 



not tell, — " to the third heaven," " into Paradise," 
where he " heard unspeakable words, which it is not 
lawful for a man to utter ; " and this shows that 
Paradise is not below, but above ; that it is not in 
Hades, but in heaven ; nay, that it is simply another 
word for the third heaven, where God's presence is 
specially manifest. In the book of the Revela- 
tion " Pie who holdeth the seven stars in his right 
hand, and walketh in the midst of the seven golden 
candlesticks," makes this promise : " To him that 
overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, 
which is in the Paradise of God ; " and this shows 
that Paradise is where the tree of life is. But in 
Rev. xxii. 1, 2, it is said that he who saw the rev- 
elation, saw " a pure river of water of life, clear as 
crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and 
of the Lamb ; and in the midst of the street of it, 
and on either side of the river, was there the tree 
of life." The throne of God and of the Lamb, 
however, is in heaven ; for the great, innumerable 
multitudes of the saved are represented as stand- 
ing, " clothed with white robes, and with palms in 
their hands," and crying, " Salvation to our God 
which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb ; " 
and since the tree of life is beside the throne, and 
in Paradise, it follows that Paradise is simply 
another word for heaven. And by what more 
beautiful or expressive name could heaven have 



120 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

been called than this of Paradise ? At first it 
meant a garden. It was applied to the pleasure 
gardens of kings, and to the garden of Eden. Xen- 
ophon, both in his Cyropcedia and in the Anabasis, 
ajDplies the word to the royal parks and pleasure 
gardens of Persia. In this sense the word is used 
three times in the Hebrew Scriptures : in Xeh. ii. 
8, Eccl. ii. 5, and Cant. iv. 13, where in our com- 
mon version it is translated by the words ** forest " 
and " orchard," though the reference to the kind's 
parks, or pleasure gardens is manifest. In the 
Septuagint it is the common word for the garden 
of Eden, out of which man was driven on account 
of sin. Then Paradise was lost toman. But Christ 
came to repair the ruins and losses of the fall, and 
to restore that lost Paradise, though in another, 
higher, and better form, even an heavenly. In 
other words, as there was a second Adam, so there 
was to be a second Paradise, a garden of God, 
with its flowing river and its tree of life ; but as 
far transcending that first Paradise, which was 
lost with Eden, as the second Adam was above the 
first. This is the Paradise of the Xew Testament, 
heaven itself. And when Christ was finishing his 
redemptive work on earth, He gave this assurance to 
the dying malefactor, who in penitence and faith 
had cried to him, u Lord, remember me when Thou 
comest into thy kingdom," — this plain and positive 



The Teaching of the Bible. 121 

assurance He gave kirn, — that not after a long sleep 
of the soul, not after waiting in unconsciousness 
and nothingness till the end of the world, after 
eighteen or eighteen hundred centuries should have 
passed, but at once, without delay, on that very day 
of his crucifixion, he should be with his crucified 
Lord and Saviour in Paradise. 

Of the first martyr, Stephen, it is said that in the 
death agony of his cruel stoning, he cried, " Lord 
Jesus, receive my spirit " (Acts vii. 59). The 
language is remarkably like that of Christ, when 
as He was expiring on the cross He said " Father, 
into thy hands I commend my spirit " (Luke xxiii. 
46). And this language can have no meaning 
unless there is a spirit in man, a mind or soul, 
which dies not with the body, but survives it, 
and goes to God, while the body returns to dust. 
For if the word spirit, as here used, means simply 
<; the breath " or " the life," physical life, then after 
death, when the breath had been dissipated in the 
air, or the vital spark extinguished for a season or 
forever, there was nothing to be kept in the hand 
of God, and these words of Christ and his martyr, 
Stephen, were as unmeaning as the name of God 
would be if there were no God. As well might a 
lamp, when its light is about to be extinguished, 
commit its flame to God, and fancy — supposing it 
capable of fancying anything — that it would be 



122 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

kept in the hand of God, and restored when the 
lamp is lighted again, as we commit the breath or 
animal life to God, " in the article of death," imag- 
ining that He will keep it till the resurrection, and 
then restore it, if this is all that is meant by the 
word spirit. There is no such thing as keeping 
the light of an extinguished lamp, or anything that 
has no existence, as some say that the soul has no 
existence between death and the resurrection. But 
an ancient Jewish writer, in a book written perhaps 
fifty, perhaps a hundred years before the time of 
Christ, says, " The souls of the righteous are in the 
hand of God, and no torture can touch them ; in 
the eyes of fools they seem to have died, and their 
departure is accounted a misfortune, and their sep- 
aration from us a ruin ; but they are in peace " 
(TVisd. of Solomon, iii. 1-3) ; and Christ Himself 
and his apostles teach that the souls of his departed 
saints go to God, and are with Christ, " absent 
from the body, and present with the Lord." 

In one of his epistles, written while imprisoned at 
Eome, and in immediate view of death, the Apostle 
Paul says, " To me to live is Christ, and to die is 
gain ; . . . . yet what I shall choose I know not ; 
for I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to 
depart, and to be with Christ, which is far better : 
nevertheless, to abide in the flesh is more needful 
for you " (Phil. i. 21-24). Every part of this 



The Teaching of the Bible. 123 

precious writing is a strong confirmation of our 
faith in the immediate reception of the believer's 
soul to the -presence and the joy of Christ at death. 
The expression " to die " is set over against the 
expression " to live," the expression " to depart/' 
is set over against the expression " to abide in the 
flesh " ; there was much to detain him here, and 
there was much more to attract him there ; and 
in his view death would be to him no loss, but a 
real, positive, transcendent gain, because it would 
bring him into a closer and more blissful union 
with his Lord. No darkness of the night is here ; 
no sleep of the soul, no delay in entering Christ's 
presence, is intimated ; no thought of an uncon- 
scious state of the dead apjDears to have once 
entered the Apostle's mind when he wrote these 
triumphant words. 

The testimony of this passage is so direct, plain, 
and positive, that believers in the unconscious state 
of the dead have confessed the difficulty of harmo- 
nizing it with their views; and some surprising 
efforts have been made to break or evade its 
force. 

First, it has been said that in this language, the 
Apostle had no reference to himself personally, 
but only to the cause of Christ, which he thought 
could not fail of being benefited by his life, if he 
should live, and by his death, if he should die. 



124 TJie Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

But one might say with equal reason that in the 
words, " To write the same things to you, to me in- 
deed is not grievous, but for you it is safe " (Phil. iii. 
1) this Apostle had no reference to himself ; nay it 
might be said with more reason, for in this passage 
(Phil. i. 21), the words, " to me," are more emphatic. 
Ellicott (in loc.) speaks of " the emphatic e/xol, to 
me, in my personal capacity." And if in this 
language the Apostle had no reference to himself 
personally, by what words could he have referred 
to himself? 

But secondly, it has been said that the word 
" depart " does not mean " to die," but perhaps to 
return or be released from the grave or from Hades 
at the resurrection. But in 2 Tim. iv. 6, " The 
time of my departure is at hand," the word " depart- 
ure " certainly means death ; and when the word is 
used in Luke xii. 36, " when he shall return from 
the wedding," as it is usually translated, the idea 
plainly expressed is, " when he shall depart from the 
wedding," the idea of returning home being implied 
as the object of the departure. And with what 
propriety or significance could the word be used by 
the Apostle, in this passage, in the sense of return- 
ino' or being released? 

Also, thirdly, it has been said that the passage 
does not say that the Apostle expected to be with 
Christ immediately after death ; and therefore it is 



TJie Teaching of the Bible. 125 

consistent with a long period of unconsciousness in 
the grave, of which the person would have no 
knowledge ; but on awaking from it, in the resur- 
rection, it would seem to him that he was admitted 
into Christ's presence immediately. But the Apos- 
tle is not here speaking of mere seeming, but of be- 
ing. It is not with fancy, but with fact, that he is 
dealing. And the words " to be with Christ " fol- 
low the word " depart 99 immediately, and the con- 
nection of thought is as close as it is possible to 
represent it. Dr. Hovey says, " The manner in 
which crvv Xpio-Tw elvat follows this term, would 
lead us to suppose that the Apostle regarded the one 
event as immediately subsequent to the other. It is 
not easy to see how he could have expressed him- 
self in a way more inevitably suggesting that idea, 
than the one which he has adopted here. Had he 
believed that an interval of unconsciousness was to 
elapse after death before the soul was to be pres- 
ent with Christ, would he not be likely, in such a 
connection, to have intimated that belief, or at least 
to have avoided language so liable to mislead the 
reader ? " 1 Certainly the interposition of any 
period of unconsciousness between death and the 
admission to the presence of Christ here spoken of, 
is purely arbitrary, and wholly inconsistent with 
the line of thought and form of expression adopted 

1 State of the Impenitent Dead, p. 61. 



126 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

by the Apostle ; and the most obvious meaning of 
his words is that which the most rigid exegesis finds 
in them, that he counted death a gain, because it 
would bring him at once into the presence of 
Christ, the only question with him being whether 
he should desire " to live in the flesh " still longer, 
or " to depart, and to be with Christ, which is far 
better." 

In another epistle the same Apostle says, " We 
are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are 
at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord 
(for we walk by faith, not by sight) ; we are confi- 
dent, I say, and willing rather to be absent from 
the body, and to be present with the Lord " (2 
Cor. v. 6-8). If these words were found in any 
other book than the Bible, they would show that 
their author, whoever he might have been, Plato 
or Cicero : Augustine or Pascal, believed that there 
is a spirit in man, a mind or soul, which is the man 
himself, and which, instead of being dependent on 
the body, and destined to perish with it, may and 
will survive its dissolution, and " absent " from it, 
be " present with the Lord." Paul, like Xenophon 
and Plato, regards the soul as something that may 
be absent from the body, and yet continue its 
existence, hold intercourse with the wise and good, 
and be intelligent and happy ; but what the philo- 
sophic Athenians only regarded as probable, the 



The Teaching of the Bible. 127 

Christian apostle was fully assured and confident 
of. 

Four things that the Apostle had just said, have 
the effect of setting forth his view in a clearer and 
stronger light. First, he had spoken of the outer 
physical man, the body, as continually decaying, 
while the inner spiritual man, the mind or soul, is 
continually renewed or reinvigorated (2 Cor. iv. 
16). Secondly, he had spoken of the body as a 
house or tenement in which the mind or the man 
dwells, as in the book of Job men are spoken of as 
ft them that dwell in houses of clay ; " the idea be- 
ing that our u earthly house " is very frail, change- 
able, and perishable, a mere tent, like one of those 
which, as a tent-maker, he had often made. 
Thirdly, he had also spoken of the body as a robe 
or garment, the material, ever-changing vestment 
of the soul, coarse and vile in comparison with that 
other ethereal and enduring robe of light, often 
called the glorified body, with which we shall be 
clothed hereafter in heaven. Fourthly, he had 
spoken of being burdened and groaning in this 
house of clay, the frail, decaying tabernacle of the 
flesh, and desiring earnestly to be freed from it, and 
clothed upon with the robes of the heavenly man- 
sion ; the fundamental conception being that our 
mortal bodies are to the soul, what our houses or 
our clothing are to our bodies — something from 



128 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul 

vrliicli the soul may be removed or unclothed, as 
oftentimes we remove from our houses, or lay aside 
our clothes at night. Then, with these thoughts 
fresh in mind, he says, " We are confident and will- 
ing rather to be absent from the body, and to be 
present with the Lord : " as to the Philippians 
he said, " I am in a strait betwixt two, having a 
desire to depart, and to be with Christ, which is 
far better." It would not be easy to find or to 
imagine language that would express more clearly 
and distinctly the idea that man may exist apart 
from the body in which now he dwells on earth, or 
to declare more positively this article of the Chris- 
tian faith, that at death the believer's soul departs 
from the body, to be with Christ in heaven. To 
interpose any period of unconsciousness between 
the soul's departure from the body, and its ad- 
mission to Christ's presence, would be in the high- 
est degree arbitrary and unnatural ; and to say 
that man has no soul that can exist apart from the 
body is contradictory to the idea of the Apostle, as 
expressed in this and other passages. 

In exact and admirable accordance with this 
fundamental thought of St. Paul, is the following 
language of the Apostle Peter : " I think it meet, 
as long as I am in this tabernacle, to stir you up 
by putting you in remembrance ; knowing that 
shortly I must put off this tabernacle even as our 
Lord Jesus Christ hath showed me. Moreover, I 



The Teaching of the Bible. 129 

will endeavor that ye may be able, after my de- 
cease, to have these things always in remembrance 99 
(2 Pet. i. 13-15). Here the word " tabernacle ' 
evidently stands for the " body ; " the expression 
to " put off this tabernacle " means simply to die ; 
and the word used by the Apostle for " decease 99 or 
death, ?£o8os, means " departure," for this word fur- 
nished the name by which we speak of the second 
book of Moses, and it is the word used in Heb. xi. 
22, where mention is made of " the departing of the 
children of Israel ; 99 and in Luke ix. 31, where it 
is said that Moses and Elias talked with Jesus on 
the holy mountain and " spake of his decease which 
he should accomplish at Jerusalem." This lan- 
guage, therefore, takes for granted the distinction 
between the words " tenant 99 and tenement;" calls 
the body a tent in which that which is the seat of 
human personality dwells, and denominates death a 
" departure," just as St. Paul speaks of dwelling in 
the body and going out from it (eKOvy/zoiWcs), to 
be present with the Lord ; and it shows that its 
author believed in the continued existence of the 
soul after death, as plainly as the idea was ex- 
pressed by Hamlet in what he said about " shuf- 
fling off this mortal coil," and — 

" The dread of something after death — 
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn 
No traveller returns/' 
9 



130 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

In another epistle (Heb. xii. 23), mention is 
made of " the spirits of just men made perfect ; " 
and they are spoken of in such connection with 
God and Christ and " the innumerable company of 
the angels," as to show that the spirits of departed 
saints are not unconscious, but still in existence, 
and with Christ, which is far better than the best 
of earth. As well might one, like the Sadducees 
of old, deny the existence of angels, as deny or 
question the existence of " the spirits of just men " 
" absent from the body and present with the Lord." 

In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus 
(Luke xvi. 19-31), it is said that "The beggar 
died, and was carried by the angels into Abra- 
ham's bosom : the rich man also died, and was 
buried ; and in hell (Hades) he lifted up his eyes, 
being in torments ; " and this while his five 
brothers were living in this world, and conse- 
quently before the resurrection of the last day. 
Now it is of no consequence to our argument what 
this parable was designed to teach, or how its 
drapery is to be accounted for, for three facts lie at 
the foundation of its imagery ; the three facts that 
men live and die and continue to exist after death. 
These facts are all taken for granted in the para- 
ble, and no one of them can be denied or called in 
question, any more than we can question the fact 
that seed sown in the field has a gradual growth, 



The Teaching of the Bible. 131 



" first the blade, then the ear. after that the full 
corn in the ear" (Mark iv. 26-29) ; or that from 
a very small seed the mustard-tree attains its sur- 
prising growth, such that the birds of the air come 
and lodge in its branches (Matt. xiii. 31. 32). It 
would be quite as arbitrary and unreasonable to deny 
any one of these three facts on which this parable 
rests, as any other ; and therefore it is a plain and 
positiye testimony from the lips of Jesus, that men 
continue their conscious existence after the death 
of the body ; as on another occasion, He told his 
disciples that men may kill the body, but they are 
unable to kill the soul. 

Such as this is the Scriptural doctrine of the soul 
and its continued existence after death. These 
passages teach plainly and positiyely that the soul 
does not die with the body, or fall into a state of 
unconsciousness, but it continues its existence though 
absent from the body, unclothed, or gone out from it. 

But there are some passages of Scripture, which 
to some minds, from certain points of view, or with 
certain prepossessions on the subject, appear to be 
inconsistent with these views, or difficult to be 
reconciled or harmonized with them. Some diffi- 
culties and objections of this kind we shall now 
proceed to consider. 

And first, it has been objected that the expres- 
sions u the immortality of the soul," and u an 



132 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

immortal soul," are not found in the Bible ; and 
therefore it is argued that the ideas are not there, and 
our doctrine is consequently unscriptural. But the 
words " motives," " habits," and " character " are not 
in the Bible ; shall we therefore say that all ideas 
of motives, habits, and character are unscriptural ? 
Nay, verily, for the ideas are there, though expressed 
by other words. What we call a man's motives, 
the Bible calls his thoughts ; what we call his 
habits, it calls his ways ; and what we call his char- 
acter, it calls his life. The reason of this usage is that 
abstract and metaphysical terms are but little used 
in the Bible ; and instead of them we find the more 
artless and unstudied terms of childhood and popu- 
lar speech. No one, therefore, need to wonder at 
the want of these phrases, " the immortality of the 
soul," and "an immortal soul," in the Bible. 

From the declaration of St. Paul that Christ 
" hath brought life and immortality to light through 
the gospel " (2 Tim. i. 10), it has been argued by 
some that without Christ there would have been no 
immortality for man, but He makes his people 
immortal by a special gift, or grace, which some 
say is conferred in baptism, others in regeneration, 
and others still at the resurrection. But the phrase 
"bring to light" does not mean to create, or to 
cause that to exist which had no existence before, 
but it rather means to make anything known which 



The Teaching of the Bible. 133 

before was unknown. So in 1 Cor. iv. 5, it is 
said that the Lord " will bring to light the hidden 
things of darkness, and will make manifest the 
counsels of the hearts ; " and surely this language 
cannot mean that God will create " the hidden 
things of darkness," but that He will expose them, 
bring them out from darkness into light, and make 
them known. So every morning the sun by his 
rising brings to light the varied features of the 
landscape, which had been hidden in the darkness 
of the night ; but it does not create them ; it brings 
them out from darkness into light. And so Christ 
has " brought life and immortality to light," by 
bringing it out from the obscurity or uncertainty in 
which, before his coming, it had been enwrapped, 
and making it known as a fact no longer to be 
questioned. 

When it is said that " God only hath immor- 
tality " (1 Tim. vi. 16), we are to understand that 
He only hath it in Himself, or as a possession uncle- 
rived and absolutely his own, though the possession 
may be, and (as even the annihilationists will not 
deny) has been, or will be, imparted to the saints 
and angels. This language corresponds very nearly 
to the words of Christ, " The Father hath life in 
Himself," and " hath given to the Son to have 
life in Himself." Self-existence belongs to God 
alone, but He has given existence to multitudes of 



134 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

creatures ; and in like manner immortality in and 
of Himself alone belongs to God only, but He has 
made many of his creatures immortal. The angels 
are confessedly immortal ; and those who are most 
tenacious of " the sleep of the soul," hold that the 
saints will be made immortal at the resurrection : 
but then it will be no less true than it is now that 
" God only hath immortality ; " and so far as this 
passage is concerned, it matters not whether man 
is made immortal in the day of his creation, or by 
baptism, or at the resurrection. Therefore, this 
passage affords no ground of objection to the doc- 
trine that God, " the Father of spirits," has made 
us his intelligent, moral, and accountable offspring, 
in his own image, and heirs of Ins immortality. 

"When St. Paul says that to those " who by 
patient continuance in well-doing, seek for glory, 
and honor, and immortality," God " will render 
eternal life " (Rom. ii. 7), we should understand that 
by eternal life is meant not simply existence, but a 
blessed existence, the blessedness that comes from 
knowing God, as Christ said, " This is life eternal, 
to know Thee, the only true God ; " and by the 
words " glory, and honor, and immortality," we are 
to understand not simply immortality, but rather 
the glory and honor of a blessed immortality, or in 
other words, the Apostle does not intimate that 
immortality is an object to be sought by those who 



The Teaching of the Bible. 135 



are not made for it, but he teaches that men should 
seek to make their immortality honorable and 
glorious. Professor Stuart, in his commentary on 
this epistle, says this expression " ' glory, and honor, 
and immortality ' is cumulative and intensive ; L e. 9 
it expresses happiness or glory of the highest 
kind ; " and he adds, " We may translate the 
phrase thus : immortal glory and honor, making the 
word immortality an adjective to the other nouns ; " 
as Conybeare and Howson say that the expression 
is u an hendiadys " for immortal glory and honor. 1 
The reason for this view of the passage is the fact 
that the words are a Hebraistic form of expres- 
sion, in which, on account of the want of adjectives 
in the Hebrew language, two or three substantives 
were used where we should have used only one or 
two, with one or two adjectives. So the phrase, 
" life and immortality," means " immortal life ; " 
and Christ's words, " I am the way, and the truth, 
and the life," are only another way of saying, " I 
am the true and living way." Not existence, there- 
fore, but a certain blessed state or condition of 
existence hereafter, is what men should seek, as- 
sured that they who seek or strive to make their 
existence a blessing, shall find it a blessing bound- 
less and endless. 

When, from those numerous passages which 

1 Life and Epistles of St. Paul, vol. ii. p. 160, note. 



136 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 



speak of death as a sleep, it is argued that the 
whole ixian ; or the soul, is literally asleep and 
utterly unconscious in the grave, it should be re- 
membered that sleep is a very superficial phenom- 
enon, that it pertains not to the soul, but to the 
body only, and that the Christian representation 
of death as a sleep points directly to the superficial 
character of sleep and death both. Archbishop 
"Whately says, — and the profoundest philosophy 
accepts and reiterates the statement, — that K The 
mind, certainly for the most part, and probably 
always, continues active during sleep ; " and every 
one knows that in sleep the life of the body is not 
destroyed ; the body itself is not subjected to 
decay ; only a part of its functions are suspended ; 
and from it we soon awake refreshed and invigor- 
ated by its mysterious, benignant influence, on 
account of which it has been called — 

" Tired Nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep ! M 
Therefore, when death is called a sleep, it cannot 
be meant that it is literally a sleep, for in several 
particulars they are different : though in outward 
appearance there is such a resemblance between 
the sleepiug and the dead, as furnishes a good 
foundation for the metaphor by which death is 
called a sleep. No fitter, more becoming, or more 
beautiful emblem of death can be furnished by all 
the world than this of sleep. The very thought 



The Teaching of the Bible. 137 

of it is sweet and peaceful, tranquillizing and re- 
freshing. Of many a sick man it has been said, 
as was said of one whom Jesus loved. " If he sleep, 
he shall do well." It has a marvelons virtue, 
more soothing, healing, and life-oivino; than that of 
balm or balsam. What rest for the weary, what 
medicine for the sick, can be compared with sleep ? 
Though according to ]\Iilton. the first sleep that 
came upon Adam was mistaken, in its drowsy 
coming, for an approaching loss of being, so that 
he says, — 

" I thought 

I then was passing to my former state 
Insensible, and forthwith to dissolve ; " 

it is not a loss of being ; it is not destructive 
or eternal, but temporary and preservative. It 
comes at the close of day, as death comes at the 
close of life, which is often called a day, and which, 
like the natural day, "is rounded by a sleep." 
Some have called " death an eternal sleep ; " but 
it is not the nature of sleep to be eternal. It is 
no part of the nature or work of sleep to destroy? 
but to preserve. It allows the inner vital forces 
to pursue then work, while the outer senses are 
completely shut; and it allows the mind to range 
far and wide in the world of dreams, or stand a 
watchful sentinel within to awaken a person at a 
certain hour, if he went to sleep with firm deter- 



138 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

mination to do so, to take alarm at any unfamiliar 
noise, though much slighter than others that are 
unnoticed, or to arouse an attendant when a patient 
makes the slightest movement, though that attend- 
ant is undisturbed by other loudest and most dis- 
tracting sounds. 1 Therefore, when this word sleep 
is used for death, it does not imply or intimate that 
the dead are in a state of utter unconsciousness, or 
not in existence, but it shadows forth the sweet 
repose, rest, and peace to which they have attained, 
and the fact that to us, who are alive, they are as 
if they were asleep. This word is never used in 
reference to " the beasts that perish ; " not they, 
but only human kind, are said to sleep in death ; 
and this usage is itself a declaration that the death 
of man is quite different from the death of brutes. 
Of two words used in the New Testament for sleep, 
the more consolatory word is used for death. One 
word, KaOtvSu), is used twenty-two times, and in 
only one instance (1 Thess. v. 10) does it signify to 
die ; while the other more consolatory word, kol/jlolq), 
is used nineteen times, and in fourteen of those in- 

1 M. Jouffroy, as quoted by Sir William Hamilton, says, 
"Whence comes this discrimination between the noises 
which deserve the attention of the attendant and those which 
do not, if, whilst the senses are asleep, the mind does not 
remain observant, does not act the sentinel, does not con- 
sider the sensations which the senses convey, and does not 
awaken the senses as it finds these sensations disquieting or 
not ? " 



The Teaching of the Bible. 139 

stances (Matt, xxvii. 52 ; John xi. 11 ; Acts vii. 
30; xiti. 36; 1 Cor. vii. 39 ; xi. 30 ; xv. 6, 18, 20, 
51 ; 1 Thess. iv. 13, 14, 15; 2 Peter iii. 4), it is 
used as another word for death ; the idea which 
this word expresses, of lying down to rest, or tak- 
ing sweet rest in sleep, making it appropriate 
and significant not of unconsciousness, but of an 
estate of rest and peace, as the early Christians 
used to say of a departed brother, "He rests in 
peace." 1 Ellicott says, " Death is rightly called 
sleep, as involving the ideas of continued existence, 
repose, and vigilance ; " and this word, Kot/.tdw, 
gave us the name of cemetery, which we often 
apply to our places of Christian burial, as Chrys- 
ostom said, " The place of burial is called a ceme- 
tery (that is, a dormitory), a place of slumber, to 
teach that they who have departed are not dead, 
but have lain down to sleep:" Such as this is the 
significance of this term sleep, as applied to the 
departed ; and surely no one would be justified in 
understanding by the term more than it properly 
signifies, even if there were no passages of Scrip- 
ture that forbid his thus understanding it. In 
reply to the objection sometimes drawn from the 
use of this term sleep in the Bible, Dr. Hovey 
has well said that "Men who believe in the con- 
sciousness of the soul after death, have been wont 
1 "Requiescit in pace." 



140 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

for ages to speak of dying as falling asleep, without 
perceiving any absurdity or incongruity in their 
language. This fact alone is a sufficient reply to 
the objection ; for Christ and his apostles used not 
the language of philosophy, but of common life." 1 

When it is said that the grave is described in 
the Bible as a land of darkness and silence, we 
should understand that it is so described because it 
appears so to us as we look at it from this side, 
just as we often speak of the grave as cold or dark, 
when the coldness and darkness is entirely in our 
apprehension, or in our view of it. Certainly the 
grave is not cold or dark to the departed, whether 
they are consciously with Christ, or in a state of 
unconsciousness. 

When objections are drawn from the absence of 
the doctrine of a future life in the book of Job, it 
should be remembered that the doctrine may be 
true, even if the author of this book knew nothing 
of it ; nay, it might be true if no trace of it could 
be found in the whole of the Old Testament ; for 
He who is greater than Job, or Moses, or David, 
or Solomon, might have revealed, on this subject, 
what had been kept secret and hidden from the 
foundation of the world. Also, the subject dis- 
cussed in this book of Job, the unequal distribution 
of good and evil in the world, and its bearing on 

1 State of the Impenitent Dead, p. 70. 



The Teaching of the Bible. 141 



the character and government of God. needed to 
be discussed without reference to the future life, 
because if it had been allowed that there is another 
life in which to correct or adjust the inequalities 
of the present, then the main question would have 
been answered, or the ground of perplexity would 
have been removed. And why should the absence 
of the doctrine of a future life in this book be 
urged against the doctrine, any more than the ab- 
sence of the name of God in the book of Esther is 
to be regarded as an argument against the fact 
of the divine existence ? 

When we read in another book that " That 
which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts ; 
even one thing befalleth them : as the one dieth, 
so dieth the other ; yea, they have all one breath ; 
so that a man hath no jDreeminence above a beast. 
. . . . All go unto one place ; all are of the dost, 

and all turn to dust again All things come 

alike to all : there is one event to the righteous 
and to the wicked ; to the good, and to the clean, 
and to the unclean ; to him that sacriflceth. and to 
him that sacrificeth not : as is the good, so is the 
sinner •; and he that sweareth, as he that feareth an 

oath The living know that they shall die : 

but the dead know not anything, neither have they 
any more a reward; for the memory of them is 
forgotten. Also their love, and their hatred, and 



142 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

their envy, is now perished ; neither have they 
any more a portion forever in anything that is 

done under the sun There is no work, nor 

device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, 
whither thou goest" (Eccl. iii. 19, 20 ; ix. 2, 5, 6, 
10) ; we may understand that the Preacher, in 
this book, like the Psalmist in the seventy-third 
Psalm, portrays several different phases of his own 
personal experience, and gives expression to cer- 
tain doubts by which he had been sorely troubled, 
but from which he afterwards recovered, since at 
the close of the book, as at the close of the psalm, 
there is an expression of triumphant faith ; or we 
may understand that, in this book, the author, like 
Shakespeare in his dramatic works, assumes several 
different characters, and speaks for several different 
persons besides his own. According to this latter 
view, the author, for the purpose of experimenting 
on the mystery of life, and of solving, if possible, 
its enigma, assumes first the character of a philos- 
opher, giving his heart " to seek and search out by 
wisdom concerning all things that are done under 
heaven 99 ; then the character of a man of the 
world, seeking pleasure in many ways ; then the 
character of a stoic, a fatalist, or a skejotic, doubt- 
ing all things, and believing nothing of God, the 
divine government, human duty, or human destiny, 
except that we come and go, brutes and men alike, 



The Teaching of the Bible. 143 

like bubbles on the sea ; and when all these ex- 
periments have proved unsatisfactory, and the 
solution of his deep, dark problem has escaped 
him at every trial, he turns for rest, peace, and 
satisfaction to God, religion, and religious faith, 
and says, " Let us hear the conclusion of the whole 
matter : Fear God, and keep his commandments : 
for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall 
bring every work into judgment, with every secret 
thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil." 
This is the Preacher's matured, deliberate, settled 
conviction ; those other opinions were expressed in 
an assumed character, or they show the different 
views that he took of things at different times in 
the course of his experience. Should this expla- 
nation, however, be unsatisfactory to any, a key 
to the interpretation of the language quoted may 
be found in the saying that the dead have not 
" any more a portion forever in anything that is 
done under the sun ; " these words indicating that 
it is in relation to this world solely that their love, 
hatred, and envy are said to be perished, and that 
it is in this respect only that " There is no work, 
nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the 
grave," because our earthly works cease at death, 
just as the work of the day naturally ceases at 
night. But, in any case, some such principles of 
interpretation must be applied to the passage ; for 



144 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul, 

if the declarations are understood in their most 
literal and absolute sense, without any reference to 
other portions of the book, they are contradictory 
to other declarations of the same author, and they 
are as inconsistent with any doctrine of the resur- 
rection, or any future state of existence, as they 
can be with the doctrine of the uninterrupted ex- 
istence and consciousness of the departed. 

When David says, " Put not your trust in princes, 
nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help. 
His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth ; 
in that very day his thoughts perish" (Ps. cxlvi. 
3, 4), the word "thoughts" is to be understood as 
denoting man's earthly plans, purposes, and expecta- 
tions ; just as when Isaiah says, " Let the wicked 
forsake his way and the unrighteous man his 
thoughts," he means by his thoughts, the wicked 
man's plans and purposes, and not his powers of 
thought or his intellectual and moral being, for 
without retaining or keeping his powers of thought, 
he could not return to God or serve Him in any 
manner. In Dr. Noyes' translation of the book of 
Psalms, the word " designs " is used for " thoughts " 
in this passage ; and this is its plain and simple 
meaning. By no lawful exegesis, therefore, can 
this passage be made to furnish even the shadow 
of a support for the doctrine that men lose their 
thinking powers, or their conscious being, in death. 



The Teaching of the Bible. 145 

When Peter, on the Day of Pentecost, said, 
" David is not ascended into the heavens 99 (Acts 
ii. 34), he was speaking of the resurrection of 
Christ, and arguing that a certain prophecy of 
David's in the sixteenth Psalm, must have had its 
fulfillment in Christ, because David, as all knew, 
had died and been buried, and his sepulchre was 
still remaining and was well known, and he had 
not experienced a resurrection from it; while 
Christ had risen from Joseph's tomb, in which his 
flesh had not seen corruption ; and after his res- 
urrection he had ascended into heaven, and been 
invested with power and glory at the right hand 
of God. Therefore this passage contains no affir- 
mation concerning the condition of David's spirit 
while absent from the body ; and for aught that 
here appears to the contrary, it may have been like 
that of Moses, consciously existing in another state 
of being. Moses, we know, died and was buried 
in a valley in the land of Moab, though no man 
knew the place of his sepulchre (Deut. xxxiv. 5, 6) ; 
and he had not been raised from his sepulchre, 
because Christ was " the first-fruits of them that 
slept" (1 Cor. xv. 20), and "the first-born from the 
dead" (Col. i. 18 ; Rev. i. 5) ; but still he appeared 
with Elijah on the holy mountain of the Transfig- 
uration, and conversed with Jesus concerning the 
leparture which He should accomplish at Jerusa- 
10 



146 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

lem ; and this shows that although, in reference to 
the resurrection, Peter could say that David had 
not yet ascended into heaven, still his spirit, like 
that of Moses, might have been consciously existing 
in the other world. Therefore this passage proves 
nothing against the continued existence of the de- 
parted. 

When St. Paul says, " If Christ be not raised, 
your faith is vain ; ye are yet in your sins ; then 
they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are per- 
ished " (1 Cor. xv. 17, 18), we should understand 
that his proposition is not categorical but hypothet- 
ical, and the case which he supposes, with its con- 
sequences, is contrary to fact, and impossible. His 
argument is in substance this : Either Christ is risen 
from the dead, or He is not risen ; if He is not risen, 
then our faith in Him is vain ; those who believe in 
Him are yet in their sins ; and those who have died 
in the faith of Christ are perished : if He is risen, 
then our faith is not vain ; those who believe in Christ 
are not in their sins ; and those who have died in 
the faith are not perished : but Christ is risen, as 
we know " by many infallible proofs ; " and therefore 
our faith is not vain, those who believe in Him the 
not in their sins, and those who have died in the 
faith are not perished. These three things, the 
worthlessness of our religion, the unbroken power 
of sin over believers, and the lost or " perished " 



The Teaching of the Bible. 



U7 



estate of those who have died in Christ, are each 
and all affirmed to be true or false, according as 
Christ is risen or not risen. It matters not what 
is meant by the sayings, that, in a certain contin- 
gency, our faith is vain, we are yet in our sins, and 
the dead in Christ are perished ; for as surely as 
Christ is risen, this is not the condition of his 
departed saints. Or we may understand the Apostle 
to say that if Christ be not risen, our faith is vain 
in this particular, that " TVe are yet in our sins." 
And in this case, those who have died in faith that 
Christ is the Saviour of sinners, and their Saviour, 
find themselves without a Saviour, and so lost or 
perished ; but this is very far from saying that they 
have fallen into a state of non-existence. There- 
fore the whole bearing of this passage is not for, but 
against, those who believe in the unconscious state 
of the dead. 

But there is a large number of passages in 
which the destiny of the wicked is expressed in such 
terms as " death," " destruction," and u perdition," 
and they are frequently said to perish, to be de- 
stroyed, to be consumed, to be ground to powder, to 
be cut off, to be blotted out, to be burned up, to 
come to an end, to be as nothing ! as in the decla- 
rations, " The end of the wicked shall be cut off" 
(Ps. xxxvii, 38) ; M TThose end is destruction " 
(Phil. hi. 19); "Whose end is to be burned" 



\ 



148 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul.. 

(Heb. vi. 8) ; and, " The wicked shall perish ; the 
enemies of the Lord shall be as the fat of lambs ; 
they shall consume ; into smoke shall they consume 
away" (Ps. xxxvii. 20). Such passages are taken 
by the annihilationists in the grossest, most literal 
and material sense, as teaching an absolute extinc- 
tion of being, complete annihilation ; but if this view 
of them is correct, then was David annihilated, or 
he thought he was annihilated, when he said in his 
haste, " I am cut off from before thine eyes 99 (Ps. 
xxxi. 22) ; and Israel when God said to him, " Thou 
hast destroyed thyself, but in me is thy help " 
(Hos. xiii. 9) ; and Job, when he said, " My days 
are extinct" (Job xvii. 1). Indeed, almost all of 
these expressions are used by Job in reference to 
himself in his sad estate of calamity and misery ; 
and this fact shows that whatever else they may 
mean, they do not mean that those to whom they 
are applied are annihilated. He says in so many 
words, " On my eyelids is the shadow of death " 
(xvi. 16); " The eye of him that hath seen me 
shall see me no more ; thine eyes are upon me, and 
I am not " (vii. 8) ; " He hath destroyed me on 
every side, and I am gone " (xix. 10) ; "I am 
become like dust and ashes" (xxx. 19). Jeremiah 
also says, " They have cut off my life in the dun- 
geon ; . . . . then I said 6 I am cut off 9 99 (Lam. iii. 
53, 54). If this language is understood in afigura- 



The Teaching of the Bible. 149 

tive sense, as significant of the intensity and severity 
of their calamities and sorrows, it is plain, intelligi- 
ble, and impressive ; but if it is understood literally, 
as the unvarnished statement of a physical fact, it 
is very strange that a dead man, and one whose 
very being had been cut off and destroyed by 
annihilation, should be able to tell of it, and write 
it in a book ! 

Also, if those principles of interpretation which 
have been employed to make the Bible teach the 
unconscious state of the dead, should be applied to 
its teachings on other subjects, they would make 
it appear to be generally inconsistent, self-contra- 
dictory, and self-destructive, and, in particular, 
would set it in direct and positive opposition to 
any faith in the resurrection or future life. For 
Jeremiah says of the princes, rulers, wise men, and 
mighty men of Babylon, " They shall sleep a per- 
petual sleep, and not awake " (li. 57) ; and Job 
says, "As the cloud is consumed and vanisheth 
away ; so he that goeth down to the grave shall 
come up no more " (vii. 9) ; and, " Man clieth, and 
wasteth away ; yea, man giveth up the ghost, and 
where is he ? As the waters fail from the sea, 
and the flood decayeth and drieth up ; so man 
lie th down, and riseth not ; till the heavens be no 
more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of 
sleep " (xiv. 10-12) ; and the author of the book 



150 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

of Ecclesiastes says, " A man hath no preeminence 
above a beast" (iii. 19). These passages are cer- 
tainly as difficult to reconcile with any belief in 
the resurrection or future state, as any other pas- 
sages are difficult to be reconciled with the contin- 
ued existence and consciousness of the departed. 
It cannot be said by the annihilationists that these 
representations are made from our human point 
of view, and that they describe things, not as they 
are in themselves, but as they appear to us, who 
see the departed going down to the grave, and 
know that " He shall return no more to his house, 
neither shall his place know him any more," 
because they deny us the liberty to make use of 
such considerations, or to apply such principles to 
the following passages : " The dead praise not the 
Lord, neither any that go down into silence " (Ps. 
cxv. 17) ; " In death there is no remembrance of 
Thee ; in the grave who shall give Thee thanks ? " 
(Ps. vi. 5) ; and, " The grave cannot praise Thee ; 
death cannot celebrate Thee : they that go down 
into the pit cannot hope for thy truth. The liv- 
ing, the living, he shall praise Thee, as I do this 
day : the father to the children shall make known 
thy truth" (Isa. xxxviii. 18, 19); and they insist 
that we must understand these, and all such passages 
of the Bible, in their most literal and unqualified 
sense, without reference to other teachings of the 



The Teaching of the Bible. 151 

Scriptures, or any of the acknowledged laws of 
language. If it is literally, absolutely, and unqual- 
ifiedly true, that "A man hath no preeminence 
above a beast," and " He that goeth clown to the 
grave shall come up no more," then of course 
Christ's teaching that u A man is much better than 
a sheep " (Matt. xii. 12), and Paul's that " There 
shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the 
just and unjust " (Acts xxiv. 15), must be explained 
in harmony with these other plain and manifest 
declarations of the Old Testament, or else be pro- 
nounced erroneous, and any hope of a life to come, 
for the whole or any part of the human race, is a 
delusion and a mockery. We believe in a life to 
come after this life, and we believe that there is a 
real, complete, and perfect consistency and har- 
mony in the Bible ; but its consistency and har- 
mony of doctrine on this subject of the future 
state, and on other subjects as well, cannot be 
made to appear on any such principles as those 
employed to make it teach the doctrines of annihi- 
lation or the sleep of the soul. 

The examination that we have now made of 
these various passages of Scripture shows that no 
language could teach that the soul is spiritual and 
immortal, more plainly and positively than the 
Bible teaches it ; and all objections drawn from 
the Scriptures and urged against the doctrine are 



152 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

superficial, and by no means difficult to be an- 
swered ; apparent and not real, mere show and not 
substance. If the Bible does not teach this doc- 
trine of the soul, then it would not be possible to 
show that any man or body of men, ancient or 
modern, Christian or heathen, ever held or taught 
the doctrine ; if Jesus Christ and his apostles did 
not hold and teach the doctrine, it cannot be shown 
that Homer or Socrates, John Howe or Jeremy 
Taylor, John Bunyan or Dr. Channing, ever held 
or taught it. The words ascribed to Sir Walter 
Raleigh, — 

" Go soul, the bodies guest, 
Upon a thankless arrant ; 
.... Stab at thee who will, 
No stab the soul can kill," 

do not teach or imply the spirituality or immor- 
tality of the soul more plainly than do the words 
of Christ, " Fear not them which kill the body 
but are not able to kill the soul ; " and those could 
be explained away as easily as these ; and in our 
common religious literature and in the sermons 
preached from our pulpits, there is the same use 
of language as in the Bible, and the former could 
be proved to be materialistic as easily as the 
latter. 



CHAPTER V. 



CONCLUSION. 

In the preceding chapters, we have considered 
the nature and destination of the soul in the three- 
fold light of Christian theology, nature and reason, 
and the Bible, and found that the common faith 
of Christendom, the profoundest philosophy, and 
the lively oracles of the Holy Scriptures agree in 
holding and teaching that the soul is spiritual and 
immortal. 

It only remains to be said that these views of 
the soul as spiritual and immortal are very noble 
and ennobling, and they should be commended to 
all as of priceless worth, and be held fast in life 
and death, alike. 

Noble and ennobling are these views of the soul. 

For they teach that God, " the Father of spirits," 

is Himself a spirit ; and that we, his children, are 

spirits, spirits made in his image and likeness, and 

destined to share his immortality ; and being thus 

kindred to God and to his angels, — 

" Why should our passions mix with earth, 
And thus "belie our heavenly birth ? " 

Cheering, too, and strengthening to the soul are 



154 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 



these views of its nature and destiny. Through 
the influence of these views, and the faith which 
they make possible, thousands and millions have 
been made strong to meet death fearlessly and even 
joyfully, as if going to a wedding banquet ; to 
triumph in the dying hour, and say, " Thanks be 
unto God, who giveth us the victory through our 
Lord Jesus Christ," " who hath abolished death, 
and brought life and immortality to light." 

Comforting also to the bereaved and the sorrow- 
ing are these views of the soul and its destiny. 
They enwrap the habitations of the dead with a 
cloud of light ; from the coffin they lift the pall ; 
from the tomb they roll away the stone ; monu- 
mental shafts of stone, granite, and marble, they 
make to point upward to the skies ; and on such 
monuments, with the beloved names, they write the 
inscriptions, " Xot lost, but gone before ; * " He 
rests in peace ; " " Absent from the body and 
present with the Lord." 

In the Christian hymns of all the ages, remark- 
ably clear, distinct, and emphatic expression has 
been given to these views, showing how precious, 
comforting, and inspiring they are. 

It was the inspiration of these views that led 

Montgomery to say in his well-known lines, — 

" There is a calm for those who weep, 
* A rest for weary pilgrims found ; 

And while the mouldering ashes sleep 
Low in the ground, 



Conclusion. 



155 



" The soul, of origin divine, 

God's glorious image, freed from clay, 
In heaven's eternal sphere shall shine, 
A star of day. 

" The sun is but a spark of fire, 
A transient meteor of the sky ; 
The soul, immortal as its sire, 
Shall never die." 

It was the inspiration of these views that led 
Bishop Heber to say, on the occasion of a friend's 
death, — 

" Thou art gone to the gra\~e ; and its mansion forsaking, 
Perchance thy weak spirit in fear lingered long ; 
But the bright light of Paradise beamed on thy waking, 
And the sound thou didst hear was the seraphim's 
song." 

In a well-known hymn sung at the consecration 
of the cemetery at Mount Auburn, occur these 
lines : — 

"Light from darkness ! Life from death ! 
Dies the body ; not the soul ; 
From the chrysalis beneath 
Soars the spirit to its goal." 

On the beautiful monument in that cemetery, 
called that of Emily or the sleeping child, these 
views led to the inscription of these lines : — 

" Shed not for her the bitter tear, 
Nor give the heart to vain regret ; 
'Tis but the casket that lies here, 
The gem that rilled it sparkles yet." 



156 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

With' kindred spirit, and from the impulse of the 
same faith, Longfellow said in his " Resignation : " 

" There is no Death ! What seems so is transition ■ 
This life of mortal "breath 
Is but the suburb to the life elysian, 
Whose portal we call Death. 

" She is not dead, — the child of our affection, — 
But gone unto that school 
Where she no longer needs our poor protection, 
And Christ Himself doth rule. 

" In that great cloister's stillness and seclusion, 
By guardian angels led, 
Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollution, 
She lives, whom we call dead." 

Whittier also, from the same faith, says : — 

" Another hand is beckoning us, 
Another call is given ; 
And glows once more with angel steps 
The path that leads to heaven. 

" 0, half we deemed she needed not 
The changing of her sphere, 
To give to heaven a shining one, 
Who walked an angel here. 

x " Unto our Father's will alone 

One thought hath reconciled : 
That He whose love exceedeth ours 
Hath taken home his child. " 

Campbell, also, in his "Pleasures of Hope/* 
says : — 

" Unfading Hope ! when life's last embers burn, 
When soul to soul and dust to dust return ! 



■Conclusion. 



157 



Heaven to thy charge resigns the awful hour ; 
O ! then thy kingdom comes ! immortal Power ! 
What though each spark of earth-born rapture fly 
The quivering lip, pale cheek, and closing eye ! 
Bright to the soul thy seraph hands convey 
The morning dream of life's eternal day — 
Then, then, the triumph and the trance begin, 
And all the phoenix spirit burns within ! 
Cold in the dust this perished heart may lie, 
But that which warmed it once shall never die ; 
That spark unburied in its mortal frame 
With living light, eternal, and the same, 
Shall beam on Joy's interminable years, 
Unveiled by darkness — unassuaged by tears ! " 

And these views led another of our rapt psalm- 
ists to say, — 

" In vain the fancy strives to paint 
The moment after death, 
The glories that surround the saint, 
When yielding up his breath. 

" One gentle sigh his fetters breaks ; 
We scarce can say, f He's gone/ 
Before the willing spirit takes 
Her mansion near the throne. 

" Faith strives — but all her efforts fail — 
To trace her heavenward flight ; 
No eye can pierce within the vail 
Which hides that world of light. 

" This much, — and this is all, — we know : 
They are supremely blest — 
Have done with sin, and care, and woe, 
And with their Saviour rest." 



158 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

So inspiring are these views of the soul and its 
immortality. But from the opposite doctrine, that 
there is nothing in man of a spiritual nature more 
than in the "brutes that perish, no soul to sur- 
vive the dissolution of the body, could any such 
joy. or triumph, or inspiration spring ? or any me- 
lodious verse that could be compared with this ? 
Could au annihilationist write such hymns as 
these ? They may sing indeed of the resurrection, 
but that is not their peculiar doctrine ; and the ques- 
tion that we ask is, Can they find any real poetic 
inspiration in their peculiar doctrine that, as Byron 
says scornfully, man is but " a kneaded clod 99 of 
earth, and that when he dies he dies entirely, like 
the brutes ? i 

When President Harrison died, a few weeks after 
his entrance upon the duties of his majestic office, 
as soon as he had ceased to breathe, one of the high 
officials in attendance passed into an adjoining 
room, and said to those who were waiting in sus- 
pense and sorrow there, a President Harrison is in 
heaven." Uttered in view of a Christian believer's 
departure from this world, to be with Christ, which 
is far better, the language was as Christian as it 
was sublime. 

Such as this is the Christian doctrine of the soul. 
This is the Christian assurance of immortality. 
Christ has given it. What nature and reason inti- 



Conclusion. 



159 



mated, but could not positively prove. He has pos- 
itively declared, and made a practical, influential fact 
in the world's experience and history. He has dis- 
pelled the darkness that hung at first, like morning 
mists, over the soul's destiny, and He has brought 
life and immortality to light. He has revealed to 
us a world to come, and a world within. He has 
declared plainly, positively, and with authority, that 
of which men had intimations before, but only 
intimations, and not certainty. He has given us 
the key to those mysterious hieroglyphics of our 
being and destiny, that are older and profounder in 
meaning than those of Egypt. He has told us 
that every human being has a soul which is of more 
worth than the world, or than all worlds ; and that 
whosoever liveth and believeth in Him shall never 
die. And therefore death is now no longer the 
remorseless tyrant and destroyer, that once he was ; 
but he is God's blessed angel, sent to call his chil- 
dren home. The grave is no longer dark as night, 
barred and bolted, as the realm of darkness and de- 
spair ; but its lowest depths are radiant with the light 
of heaven, and its gates stand open like the wings 
of cherubim, to let earth's pilgrims pass through into 
the eternal city. Thanks be unto God for this. 
Thanks, everlasting thanks, for the grace by which 
at death we say, like the expiring Stephen, " Lord 
Jesus, receive my spirit." Thanks, everlasting 



160 The Christian Doctrine of the Soul. 

thanks, for the grace by which survivors write upon 
the tombstones of departed saints these words of 
immortal hope, " Absent from the body and present 
with the Lord." 



INDEX. 



PAGE 

Annihilation, figurative use of the word . . . 148 

" inconceivable 66 

" unknown in Xature 61 

Cause and condition distinguished 33 

Christian doctrine of the soul ...... 158 

Control of Xature an exhibition of the soul ... 53 

Death a sleep 136 

" defined 49 

" use of the word 95, 147 

Discussion of Luke xxiii. 43 .... 103-118 
Distinction of soul and body shown by trances ... 37 
" " " " " " " " sleep ... 38 
Effects of our view of the soul comforting . . . 154 
' " " " " " " " ennobling ... 153 
" " " " " " " inspiring .... 155 

Faith of the Early Church 17 

" " various churches 26-30 

God a Spirit 74 

Hades 87 

Immortality, beauty of death an argument for . . 65 

" congenial 61 

11 desired - . 57 

" doctrine of in Job and Ecclesiastes . . 141 

H expected 59 

" man's regard for the dead an argument for . 65 

" soul adapted to 62 

" soul's triumph in dying a presumption of . 63 
" the belief of the race .... 66 
"Immortality of the soul " not a Bible phrase . . . 132 



162 Index. 

Influence of soul on body 50 

James Kennard, Jr., story of 67 

Koi/xaco 139 

(Lebh) 83 

Life a mystery 11 

■ * use of the word . . 95 

Man made in God's image 72 

Man's physical frame a declaration of the soul ... 52 

Materialism, argument stated 32 

" weakness of . . .... . .32 

t^n? (Methim) 85 

"My," use of, a proof of an indwelling spirit ... 54 
n£E?3 (X'shamah) 80 

& ; P3 (Nephesh) ■ . . . 79 

Paradise, place of . . . . . • • . 105, 118 
Passages discussed. 

Gen. i. 27 . • 72 

Gen. ii. 7 79 

Ps. cxlvi. 3, 4 144 

Matt. x. 28 . . .... 100 

Matt. xxii. 23-33 100 

Mark xii. 18-27 100 

Luke xvi. 19-31 . . . . . .130 

Luke xx. 27-40 100 

Luke xxiii. 43 . . . . . .103 

Acts vii. 59 . ' . . • . . . 121 
Rom. ii. 7 ...... 134 

2 Cor. v. 6-8 126 

Phil. i. 21-24 . . . . . .122 

1 Tim. vi. 16 . . . . . . 133 

2 Tim. i. 10 . 132 

Heb. xii. 23 . . • . . . 130 
2 Peter i. 13-15 129 

HvevfJia 90 

*v X v 89, 92 

D^SD^ (R'phaim) 85 



Index. 163 

Reason, conclusion of 70 

rrn (r u «ui) 8i 

Scriptural investigation, result of . • • 151 

VlM?? (Sheol) 87 

Soul defined 7 

" distinguished from spirit 8 

" its nature a mystery 10 

" two views of the 13 

" views of the Fathers concerning the . . . 19-24 

Spiritual interpretation indorsed by Paul ... 76 

Spirituality of our religion 78 

Twofoldness of language 6 



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